


All Our Days

by voicedimplosives



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Akiva - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Her Two Sisters, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bastatha, Batuu, Chandrila, Coruscant (Star Wars), F/M, Flashbacks, HALF AGONY HALF HOPE, Jakku, Kashyyyk, Mutual Pining, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey Pain Train, Rey's Parents Returned, Rhinnal, Romance, Smuggler Ben Solo, The Author Asks You to Please Kindly Forgive any Canonverse Mistakes, What if Ben's Force Abilities Did Not Appear Until He Was Much Older?, What if Rey and Ben Met on Jakku, What if the New Republic Waged War Against the First Order Earlier, What-If, persuasion au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2019-08-17 06:32:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 221,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: "I can listen no longer in silence."The hologram projection of his strangely handsome face is cobalt blue, flickering, and full of static. "I must speak to you, Rey. You… you pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me that I amnottoo late.” He groans, runs his hands through his dark, silver-streaked hair, then refocuses his gaze on the holorecorder. “I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Donotsay that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death."Here the recording of Ben takes a deep breath, and looks down at something outside the holorecorder’s field of view.Perhaps at his hands, Rey manages to think, through the veil of shock and timid, fluttering hope. She wishes she were there with him, so she could take them in her own, and offer him the confidence to carry on.But this is only a hologram, so she must wait. Eventually, when he looks up again, his features have settled. He looks… Fierce. Determined. Self-assured."I have loved none but you," he says.





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Just a quick note: I have made a playlist for this fic, with each track sort of roughly correlating to a chapter! If you want to take a listen, it is [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HvuuLatLmg8ZGUXJrcgCN).]

  **42 ABY.**

 

There isn’t a soul in the galaxy who’d be foolish enough to call Ergel of Jakku a solicitous or selfless man— that’s a fact. Ergel owns a bar in Cratertown, which is less a proper settlement than it is a sad ramshackle collection of shanties. Everybody knows the place has more Tuanulberry bushes than it does sentient beings.

 

But Ergel doesn’t mind. He’s got two of his three daughters to help tend the bar and keep the place clean; his nights are spent drinking or gambling or most often both, and his days are spent sleeping it off. It’s a good setup, for Ergel.

 

His eldest daughter, Verla, a vain clever creature who likes to sit around gossiping with the regulars, leaves most of the work for Ergel’s second daughter, Rey, a sad wisp of a woman who, many mean souls mutter to each other under their breath, is well past her prime. The youngest, Gozetta, a nice enough girl although she never saw a sorry circumstance she couldn’t turn into a pity party for herself, is already married off. Few years back some hotshot pilot for the New Republic’s fleet who goes by the name Poe Dameron swept through Jakku on a reconnaissance mission. He was sweet on Rey for a while, even asked for her hand once he’d finished what he came to do, but Rey turned him down, kind but firm, and in his distress he fell into the open arms of her little sister. Now they live in what only a blind idiot might call domestic bliss on the Core planet Chandrila.

 

Ergel fancies himself of noble birth, but anyone with any sense knows that’s only in comparison to the half-starved scavengers that wander into his bar. His favorite holobook is a compendium of every famous figure in the galaxy’s umpteen thousand years of history, cross-indexed by name, homeworld, wealth, familial connections, achievements, and rank. People say he’s got the damn thing memorized.

 

“ _We’re_ descended from Contispex the First himself,” he likes to tell people. Nevermind that Contispex is famous for two things: his affiliation with the anti-alien Pius Dea Crusades, and the fact that the illegal dynasty he founded unjustly held control of the galaxy for well over a thousand years. No, that doesn’t bother Ergel; the man was a shining star in the Old Republic’s firmament, according to him, and a name that everyone knows.

 

That’s all that _really_ matters.

 

Some folks call him Ergel the First. Some bow and scrape at his bar, blurting out ridiculous compliments in the hopes of getting a free drink. Some refer to him as the Chancellor of Cratertown. Most of ‘em are joking. Most.

 

But then again, people say a lot of barvy things, ‘specially after they’ve imbibed a few too many shots of Ergel’s specialty, knockback nectar. People should be careful with that stuff, too much of it’ll steal a body’s voice and numb their mouths— making them liable to bite their own tongues off. Although… maybe that’d keep ‘em from wagging about Ergel so much.

 

Another thing people wonder about Ergel: will he ever marry again? There aren’t too many eligible women wandering around Jakku. Handful of old scavengers who aren’t related to anyone famous, and in any case, are too smart for the likes of Ergel. Most of them, though, have done whatever’s necessary to get off that dead rock of a planet by the time they reach a marrying age.

 

But you see, the reason people ask that, is because when Ergel returned to Jakku, ‘bout six years ago or thereabouts, he came with his wife, Hedda, and Verla and Gozetta. Only member of the family who wasn’t part of this glorious return was Rey— ‘cause she was exactly where they’d left her: on Jakku. They’d fled when she was just a grubby-fingered youngling, and the day they showed up again? She didn’t even recognize them ‘til Hedda pulled out a bunch of old holovids Ergel had filmed years back. The vids showed all sorts of things Rey only half-remembered: Rey and Verla running around on the Crackle, that great field of shining black glass that surrounds a crashed Star Destroyer out near the Starship Graveyard; climbing up the thick, armored legs of the luggabeasts that sat waiting for their Teedo masters outside the Niima Outpost; the three of them, Gozetta still just a tiny baby, napping quietly on the sofa in their Cratertown living room while a Holoprogram droned quietly in the background.

 

She’d gasped when Hedda had shown her those, and embraced them— _all_ of them— and called them ma and pa and sisters, and that had been that.

 

 _Didn’t have enough room on the ship,_ Ergel says with a shrug, when people ask about those lost years. _We knew our Rey was tough like a spinebarrel. If any of our girls could take care of themselves ‘til we came back, it was her. Gozetta was too small and Verla was too delicate for the desert. Didn’t come back sooner ‘cause we ran outta money in some backend shadowport, had to stay a while._

 

Ergel usually fails to mention that the ‘while’ they stayed amounted to about a decade and a half.

 

He also fails to mention that the night before he and his family up and left, he’d won the pot in a game of sabacc he’d been playing down at Niima Outpost. He fails to mention that he sold Rey to the post’s Crolute junk boss, Unkar Plutt, who made her work her fingers to the bone for years without telling her where her family was, while he and his wife and his two favorite daughters were off enjoying the spoils from that one lucky game. And funnily enough, he’s never deemed it worth sharing that Plutt, without telling her, took a portion of Rey’s daily scavengings and forwarded the credits to Ergel.

 

Ergel doesn’t like to talk about how thin and tough his daughter was by the time he came crawling back, out of credits and riding the last sputterings of a light freighter’s dying ion engine.

 

After all… that doesn’t make him look too good, does it?

 

No, Ergel of Jakku is not a very nice man. But he _is_ Rey’s father, and no one can deny him that, least of all Rey, who spent all those years waiting and hoping he’d return.

 

And Hedda? Well, before she died, she’d usually give a pained smile whenever anybody asked _her_ that question, about Rey. Then she’d excuse herself from the conversation and go find the daughter in question, usually hard at work keeping the bar in order. She’d wrap her middle child up in her wiry arms, even though they were both full-grown women and practically strangers, and she’d bury her freckled nose deep in Rey’s shiny sweat-damp hair.

 

“‘M sorry, baby,” her mama would murmur.

 

“For what, ma?” Rey would ask, every time, and by the lack of guile in the question, Hedda would know that somehow, her daughter had forgiven them for what they’d done.

 

She would start to cry then, and Rey would rock her gently, _her_ wiry arms wrapped now around her mother’s thin frame. She’d comfort Hedda until the guilt had passed, hushing and humming and petting Hedda’s long blonde hair.

 

So that’s how it was— right up until the morning they all woke to find Hedda had passed in her sleep.

 

 _Old age,_ Unkar’s medi-droid had said, after they’d paid him his fee. _Tough life. Not surprising, for a Human female from Jakku._

 

And now Ergel scoffs, when his customers ask him about marriage. “Couldn’t dream of it,” he says, piously. “Got my girls to think of, don’t I?”

 

By which he means, of course, that one daughter’s his beast of burden, and the other he’s hoping to foist off on some rich Chandrilan senator. And why would Ergel bother with all the effort of impressing a woman, when he’s perfectly comfortable as is? And who on Jakku is even worthy of marrying a former Imperial administrator? And wasn’t Hedda more of a headache than anything else, when she was still alive? Always nagging him to go back to Jakku, always fretting about Rey and every other fool thing.

 

 _No thank you,_ thinks Ergel. _I’ll never marry beneath my rank like_ that _again._

 

And that, as they say, is that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! First off, so, so many thanks to my beta reader, [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado), you are truly a rock star! And to [Abby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/benperor/pseuds/benperor), who made the [gorgeous moodboard](https://voicedimplosives.tumblr.com/post/179742227354/all-our-days) for this fic!
> 
> ETA: Oh my god, I can't believe I forgot to thank [Ali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo/works) for the alpha read she did over this prologue/opening chapter and my outline! Thank you again, from one _Persuasion_ fan to another!
> 
> Some links? Some links!  
> Where is [Jakku](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jakku), [Niima Outpost](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Niima_Outpost), [Cratertown](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cratertown), [Ergel's Bar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ergel%27s_Bar), the [Crackle](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crackle), and the [Starship Graveyard](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starship_Graveyard_\(Jakku\))? Where is [Chandrila](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chandrila)?
> 
> Did I think up any of the OC names in this? I did not! Here's where I found [Hedda](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hedda), [Verla](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Verla), and [Gozetta](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gozetta).
> 
> What is [sabacc](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sabacc)?
> 
> What's a [Tuanulberry bush](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tuanulberry_bush) and a [Spinebarrel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spinebarrel)?
> 
> What's a [Crolute](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crolute), a [Teedo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Teedo), and a [Luggabeast](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Luggabeast)?
> 
> What's a [Holobook](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holobook) and a [Holovid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holovid)? What's a [medi-droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Medical_droid/Legends)?
> 
> What's a [Star Destroyer](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Destroyer), a [light freighter](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Light_freighter), and an [ion engine/ion drive](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ion_drive)?
> 
> What's a [Shadowport](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowport)?
> 
> What's a [junk boss](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Junk_boss)?
> 
> What is [knockback nectar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Knockback_Nectar) and does it not sound 100% vile? [It does.]
> 
> Who is [Unkar Plutt](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Unkar_Plutt)? Who was [Contispex I](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Contispex_I/Legends) and what was [Pius Dea](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pius_Dea)? What were their [crusades all about](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pius_Dea_Crusades)?
> 
> WHEW. Okay, that's all from me. Next chapter will really dive into the story, I hope this prologue worked in setting the scene. Thanks for reading! ❤️


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt." —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**42 ABY.**

 

It’s a dead Wednesday afternoon in Ergel’s Bar. Dust motes waft around in the streaky sunshine streaming in through the boarded-up windows— the air conditioner is on the fritz again, so the place is beastly hot, its few creaky ceiling fans not doing much more than pushing the hot air around the room— and an old autojuke warbles out some jizz tune from a shadowy corner. The old moisture vaporator out back generates a constant buzzing drone, an underlying noise that everyone inside the bar has been hearing for so long they don’t even _hear_ it anymore. Not really. Everything in the place is sticky; it’s always sticky, or dusty, or both— no matter how much Rey mops and scrubs— but she’s scrubbing the bar down anyway, because, well, what else is she going to do?

 

Verla’s seated at a large round table near the mirror-covered back wall with a Human man, a Melitto, a Teedo and an old Abednedo. She’s running a game of Corellian Spike, which Rey has explicitly been told she is not welcome to join. As the dealer, Verla’s wiping the floor with the bar’s customers… a skill Rey’s father, Ergel, who’s fast asleep upstairs, never quite mastered.

 

“House wins,” she crows, offering them all a knowing smirk. “Again.”

 

“Cheater,” hisses the Melitto, his words translated by the vocoder attached to his breathing apparatus. The chitin plates of his insectile face ripple with fury, the cilia on his bare wrists stand up straight, quivering as though ruffled by a slight breeze, and his long green fingers grip the table so tightly they’ve gone pale at the knuckles.

 

Verla taps the blaster pistol holstered at her hip. Not taking it out, just laying her hand on it. A reminder. “You sure about that?”

 

“Leave it,” growls the wizened Abednedo. He gives a slight snuffle, making the fleshy tendrils hanging from his snout sway alongside his long white beard. “Take your winnings and deal the next hand, girlie.”

 

“You… I _like_ you.” She winks at him, then, turning in her chair to seek out Rey, she hollers, “Hey, barkeep! ‘Nother round of Eyeblasters for me and the gang here.”

 

Rey peeks up over the counter of the bar, just a pair of wide hazel eyes, a high brow that is damp with perspiration from her labors, and the uppermost of three buns visible at the back of her head. Her tied-back hair, while mostly chestnut brown, is streaked with a few fine threads of silver, and there are the beginnings of some crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes, where her long dark eyelashes fan out against her high cheekbones.

 

“I can’t, Verla,” she sighs. “We finished off all the rotgut.”

 

Slowly, Verla raises a perfectly plucked eyebrow, her green eyes flashing. “Then… don’t you think you _ought_ to go buy some?” she asks, enunciating each word so that Rey knows, without a doubt, just how feeble-minded she believes her sister to be.

 

“‘M a little _busy_ ,” Rey mumbles.

 

“Whatever you’re doing, it can wait—go on, get going.” With a roll of her eyes and a flick of her bleached blonde hair over her shoulder, she turns back and leans in, over the table. In a whisper loud enough for Rey to hear, she says, “It’s such a burden, keeping an eye on her. Honestly, we’d all be better off if she went back to picking at Star Destroyer bones.”

 

“Not much left to pick from those old ships,” the Melitto rasps. It has no humanoid features on its face, but its plates shift with some unknowable emotion. “Work’s drying up. Everyone’s getting out.”

 

The man and the Abednedo nod sadly in agreement.

 

“She need simple work, for simple mind,” the Teedo declares, head tilted. Despite how its rusted helmet turns its voice into a mechanical-sounding croak, something like amusement is still audible in its words. Stroking its metallic chin, it trains the dark glass of its eye-holes on Rey as she dons her cowl and steps out from behind the bar. “Could take her off your hands, put her to work? Need someone to tend my luggabeasts.”

 

“No.” Verla shakes her head, all full of frustrated malaise. She doesn’t acknowledge the Melitto’s gloomy warning. “Pa says we can’t cut her loose. We have to take care of her, since she’s obviously not clever enough to get off this rock, and she’s not pretty enough to snag a partner.”

 

“I’m right _here_ ,” Rey snaps, although her voice is muffled by the cowl. If her sister hears her, she doesn’t respond— she simply gives a resigned shrug, then begins shuffling the deck of sabacc cards. Rey, in turn, doesn’t argue with Verla’s harsh words; there’s no point in it, she’s learned. She turns and makes her way through the hot, stuffy room towards the exit.

 

As Rey is leaving, she hears Verla let out another sigh, then conclude, in that same faux-confidential tone, “We’re stuck with her, I’m afraid.”

 

When Rey steps out into the bright afternoon, she slams the door behind her, _hard_. It won’t make any difference, she knows; it’ll probably even support the Teedo’s argument that she’s simple-minded.

 

But it makes her feel better. And these days, that’s about the best she’s going to get.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The heat from Jakku’s sun is brutal, especially when it reaches its zenith in the sky. Now, in the late afternoon, it hovers above the southern horizon; in a few hours, it’ll set. The winds will pick up, the temperature will plummet, night will sap any remnant of warmth from the land. And until the sun returns, the darkened world will somehow become even more tortuous than it is during the day.

 

Rey’s not worried, though— she’s lived her whole life here, and she understands Jakku’s rhythms. That’s not to say she loves them, of course. But she knows what she’s in for. Which is why she’s outfitted in light Tsu-seed linen trousers and tunic, arms wrapped, head and bust protected by a cowl of the same fabric, thick transparisteel goggles keeping her eyes safe from Jakku’s ever-present grit; her bloggin leather boots and belt are the only non-linen items she’s got on. After all these years, it’s easy enough for her to ignore the way sweat pools in the small of her back and between her toes, to focus instead on the rush of air that cools her, as she zips away from Cratertown.

 

There are few things that give Rey so great a dose of joy and relief as riding her speeder. It’s probably the only property she has which she can truly call her own— as it was conceived and constructed by Rey’s own two hands, during the hard times when her family was gone. No one can take that from her, neither the transport nor the accomplishment. It’s _her_ custom design, made from civilian and military parts that she salvaged herself from the corpses of the Empire’s doomed and desert-bound fleet, combining the best assets of a swoop bike and a speeder, equipped with top-of-the-line Imperial repulsorlifts and an electroshock security mechanism. She’s _damn_ proud of it.

 

Sometimes, when Rey takes her speeder out for rides, she thinks about that time. Before. Before they returned for her. Living in her AT-AT, longing for her family, her only company Mashra, a fellow salvager and old friend of Ergel’s. She gets lost in the long stretch of years between the blank slate of early childhood and the dull misery of present day, and she smiles to herself, faint and rueful.

 

(She rarely allows herself to think of _him_ , on these rides. It’s too painful. Still.)

 

She’s not smiling now, though. She’s _beaming_. Under her cowl, hidden from the world, she wears a wide wild grin that stretches from ear to ear, dimpling her sunken cheeks. The only witness to her raucous joy is Rey herself, of course, but that’s fine by her. She whoops into the wind, switches gears and hits the foot pedal hard, sending the twin turbojet engines into overdrive and setting the afterburners aflame. With a loud _‘nyoom!’_ she’s off, zooming over the canyons of the Goazon Badlands, where nightwatcher worms lie hiding in wait, over the Sinking Fields, where innocent-looking divots in the pale blond earth will devour an entire starfighter in seconds, and around the foothills of the Fallen Teeth mountain ridge, where many salvagers make their camp at night.

 

Soon enough, Niima Outpost appears in the distance, a dark blur smudged across the windswept landscape, just barely visible through the shimmering heat that rises up off the sand.

 

And although she’s been riding her speeder for the better part of an hour, it is still with a heavy sigh that she parks it, when— only a few minutes after first catching sight of the outpost— she finds herself at its gates. It takes her less than ten minutes to haggle for and purchase what she needs, alcohol home-brewed by one of the vendors in the marketplace and a few other much-needed supplies, and then she’s storing them in the cargo net of her speeder alongside her quarterstaff, ready to return to the drudgery of a long, boring afternoon at the bar.

 

“Rey?” calls someone, from behind her. It’s a raspy voice— most are on Jakku, burnt by years of drinking and sun and sand— and it belongs to a female, although it’s deeper than a Human woman’s register.

 

Mashra.

 

Rey is a tall woman, stands just six inches shy of six feet, but she still has to tilt her head back when the stately Abednedo salvager approaches. “Hullo,” she just barely gets out, before she is swept up into the female’s strong arms, feet no longer touching solid ground.

 

“It’s been _months_ ,” Mashra says, chiding. “Six of them, at least. Where have you _been_? Why haven’t you come to see me?”

 

“Working, mostly.” It’s not easy for her to speak around the fabric of Mashra’s tunic, and feeling a little faint from how tightly the Abednedo is squeezing her, she gives Mashra’s shoulder a light tap. At once she is set back on her feet. “Just out in Cratertown, you know, tending the bar.”

 

Mashra’s gaze roves over her face, studying it. “He works you too hard, that Ergel.” Rey can hear the disapproval in her friend’s voice; it makes her curl in on herself, just a little.

 

Defensively, she argues, “He makes us money, too. With the gambling. Sometimes.”

 

“Oh yes, I’ve seen him around gambling, all right,” huffs Mashra, “he wins more than he loses, I’d say.” Rey winces, but doesn’t refute that. A pause hangs between them, contemplative. Mashra gives a few blinks of her bulging eyes. She sniffs; the long slitted nostrils in her hollowed cheeks quiver and her mouth tendrils swing from her long snout. Then: “You’ll stay for dinner, of course.”

 

“I wish I could, really, but I can’t. I’m sorry, it’s just—Verla’s waiting on the rotgut—”

 

“Hang Verla!” Mashra’s words ring out, loud and deep and resonant even in the muted buzz of the marketplace. A few people pause in their bartering to turn and stare. “Verla can wait,” she adds, at a lower decibel. “You’re too thin, Rey, and it’s been too long since we _really_ talked. We… need to do that. You’re coming for dinner.”

 

Her tone brooks no argument, so Rey gives a small shrug. “Alright, Mashra.” As she climbs up onto her speeder, she has a moment of inspiration; pulling her comlink from the satchel she has strapped across her body, she gives her oldest friend a sly smile, then says, “I’ll come for dinner… but _you_ have to explain to Verla why she won’t be having any more Eyeblasters this afternoon.”

 

“Deal,” Mashra sniffs, imperiously, and snatches the comlink from her hands.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You noticed how empty Niima Outpost is getting, no doubt,” Mashra says later, after they’ve settled into their soft sandbag chairs, a bowl of pole-snake stew in each of their laps.

 

“Really? I didn’t, but now that you mention it…” Rey bites into her hunk of pastebread, dripping with broth. The bread is next to flavorless, having been removed from a can sitting for Force-knows-how-long in Mashra’s corrugated-tin bunker, but… the stew is good— spicy, and hearty. Thoughtfully, she chews.

 

“I’ve been meaning to come see you for a while now, Rey,” she tells her, sounding remorseful. “I should’ve. I know that. I’m supposed to take care of you. But I’ve been busy, getting my own affairs in order. Everyone’s been talking about it for months… The big dry-up. You _really_ haven’t heard anything in the bar?”

 

Now that Mashra’s mentioned it, Rey _can_ remember some grumblings from their dwindling clientele: whispers that many of the Hutts have already left— a sign that the planet’s profitability is coming to an end— and that the ships have been stripped of most of their valuable parts, that many of the planet’s salvagers had been recruited by both sides of the distant war raging in the Outer Rim. The big dry-up, just like Mashra says.

 

But she hasn’t really given it much thought, as busy as she’s been keeping the bar open. (And in _not_ thinking about anything or _anyone_ else.) And she’d mostly chalked it up to the kind of bellyaching that often gets thrown around, when the knockback nectar is flowing. But now that she has a moment to breathe, a moment to think, a moment to herself… she considers it.

 

Jakku has been a dried-up husk of a planet for what seems like forever. Once, when she was very young— eight, maybe nine years old— and scrubbing up her haul in the shade of Unkar’s canopied shack, she met one of the grim-faced old monks who belongs to the Church of the Force, way out in the village of Tuanul. He’d looked at her with pity and she’d resented that, but she still hadn’t been so proud as to reject the cup of clean water he bought for her. And as she sat enjoying the novelty of a cool, refreshed mouth— that rarely occurred, back in those days— he’d told her a story.

 

The story of Jakku.

 

Many, many millennia ago, it was a rich green forest world. And then something had happened, some cataclysmic event that should’ve been the end for everything. But it wasn’t. What it did do, however, was annihilate much of life on Jakku, leaving only the nastiest, hardiest plants and animals to thrive. And in time, over the course of all those millions of years, the planet had become a barren desert.

 

Rey couldn’t fathom it, back then. (These days, she thinks she can relate.) And when she stops to think about it, it doesn’t seem all that improbable that this planet would be abandoned by sentient life eventually… although it looks like that is going to happen sooner rather than later.

 

She’s drawn back to the present when Mashra asks, “Ergel talk to you much, ‘bout how the bar is doing?”

 

“What d’you mean?” She dips her spoon, gathers broth and pole-snake meat onto it. “I _run_ the place, I know how it’s doing!”

 

“I mean the finances.”

  

That stops her dead in her tracks, spoon halfway to her mouth. Now it is her turn to study Mashra’s face, but as always, she finds it difficult to glean the Abednedo’s motives; her expression is cagey, her black eyes trained on her stew. She slurps loudly from her own spoon, ignoring Rey’s gaze. But it doesn’t matter. Even if Mashra won’t explain her meaning, it’s been six years since her family came back to Jakku, and Rey knows her father well enough to know _exactly_ where this is heading.

 

After a beat, Rey sighs. She drops her spoon back into the bowl; her appetite has vanished. “Tell me how bad it is.”

 

Now. Now Mashra looks up from her lap. She also heaves a sigh, a heavy exhale blown out through her snout.

 

“The worst it’s ever been,” she says, dark gaze pitying. “And he’s been banned from all the sabacc games on Jakku. Verla too, everyone knows she cheats.” She hesitates, blows out another resigned sigh. “I’m going to need _your_ help in convincing him to sell the bar. For his own sake.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

By the time Mashra walks Rey to her speeder, the twin moons of Jakku glow like Veda pearls in the inky night sky. There is so little civilization around, so little light pollution, that mere minutes after Rey has hugged Mashra goodbye— with a promise from the Abednedo that she will visit tomorrow— donned her cowl and goggles, and zoomed off back towards Cratertown, the stars come out. In bright clustered constellations, they emerge from the dark expanse; winking at her like old friends saying hello, Rey mournfully greets them in kind.

 

She cuts the engine when she gets close to a dark shape, hidden amongst the dunes. A hulking corpse of an AT-AT, rusted out and laying defeated on its belly; it is steeped in long shadows cast by the silvery moonlight, and they set Rey on edge. After locking the speeder down and removing her goggles, she stumbles over the sand; once she is close to the opening in the old transport’s hull, she retrieves her glowrod from her satchel.

 

With a flick of her thumb across its activator, she dispels the shadows. Miraculously, no one has taken up residence in her former home; somehow, it has remained empty all these years. As Rey moves inside, and eases herself into her old makeshift hammock, she wonders if Mashra scares away anyone who tries to move in. She wonders if she knows Rey comes out here, that it’s the only time she allows herself to think of the past, and Mashra wants her to have that. A safe place, a secret place. Something that’s still her own.

 

It’s a nice thought.

 

A less nice thought: it’s strange to Rey how her sleeper in Cratertown, in the shabby apartments above Ergel’s Bar, never feels as comforting or comfortable as this knobby old rope hammock. And now that she’s thinking about Ergel… she allows herself a moment of complete, absolute despair.

 

Just gives into it, lets it fill her up, lets herself drown in it.

 

He’s always been on the brink of ruin, since the day he returned. She’s the first to admit that. But she’d had no idea the depths of his debts… and when Mashra had laid them out for her, in all their horrible detail, adding that she was almost certain the Niima Outpost Militia was going to come for Ergel if he didn’t start paying up—

 

Rey had wanted to cry. She still does. In fact, without further ado, she begins to. Why not? There’s no one around for kilometers, and she knows for a fact— verified by a decade and change spent on her own, in this very AT-AT— that her family won’t come looking for her. Not if they don’t need her for something.

 

This. This is what she had waited for. (This is what she had turned down his proposal for.) The only members of her family who even seemed to miss her, or care how horrible her life had been in their absence— her mother and her younger sister— are gone. One gone to the beyond, and one gone to Chandrila, married with children to care for; too far away, even with their sporadic communications.

 

And sure, she and Verla could probably hold off the Militia for a while. Verla’s a whiz with her blaster and Rey, when armed with her quarterstaff, is not someone to be trifled with. But this is her home. Has been her home, all her life. And she’d thought…

 

She’d always imagined, in those nights spent lying in this hammock, that when her parents returned, she wouldn’t have to scrape like this anymore. She thought the fighting would be finished. She thought that the return of her family would bring about the end of her fending for herself.

 

She thought she’d be taken care of. Or at least… loved. That's it. She thought she’d be loved.

 

The tears are really flowing now, hot and furious. Gently, she swings the hammock with the tip of her booted toe on the sandy durasteel floor.

 

Oh yes, they’d come back alright, just like she had promised herself every night, while she rocked herself to sleep. They’d come back, but not for her. Not because they loved her. They’d come back desperate, and bitter, and in the intervening years, they had heaped all their bitter, desperate vitriol upon Rey’s head.

 

As she often does these days, she thinks about leaving them. It makes her heart seize up, wild fear drumming in her ears. She could, she knows. She could ask Mashra to help her, she could sell her speeder to Unkar, she could ransack the bar and barter for credits from the other junk-lords, she could buy passage from some off-worlder to get her to a shuttle.

 

She could _go_. Just like that.

 

But if she did, she’d be no better than them. And what’s more… she’d be alone.

 

Alone. The very idea of it, that’s what makes her pulse thready, what steals her breath. Rey has spent so much of her life alone. They might not be much of a family, they may be selfish and lazy and uncaring and they may be pulling her down into an inescapable morass of insolvency and misery, but that does not discount the fact that they are _hers_.

 

(And she does not have _him_ anymore. She did, for one dizzying moment. She did have him, but now she doesn’t. That’s her fault. He’s long gone; he probably never even thinks of her anymore. This is all she has left.)

 

Rey brushes the tears from her cheeks. She closes her eyes, hums an old lullaby, continues her gentle rocking.

 

And for just a little while, only a handful of stolen minutes, she allows herself to remember all those times she fell asleep under this roof— including that brief blip of time where he was here, falling asleep beside her, tangled and sweating and—

 

No. She’ll remember all the rest, but not that. She won’t think about that. Never that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You’re in real trouble, Ergel.”

 

Mashra’s tone is sanguine, her fleshy tan face as inscrutable as ever. She and Rey sit on barstools, leaning on the counter. As Mashra advised her last night, Rey keeps her posture loose, her face relaxed.

 

But the words are no less potent for the calm manner in which Mashra delivers them, and Rey can tell they’re a blow to Ergel. Across the bar from them, also leaning on his elbows, he goes ashen in the face, and rushes to pour himself a drink.

 

“That so?” he asks, lightly, as if he thinks she’s joking. Still, his hands shake as he brings his glass of rotgut to his lips, and finishes it in one swallow. “What kinda trouble?”

 

“The _debts_ , Ergel,” she says, stressing the words. “You’ve got to think of your daughters, of their well-being.”

 

“You been talking to Plutt?”

 

She nods, stiffly. “He says if you sell the bar and give him ninety percent of whatever you get for it, he’ll consider forgiving the rest.”

 

 _“Consider?”_ Ergel lets out a scornful chuckle. “Not good enough.”

 

“Pa, please,” Rey tries. “Jakku’s emptying out, everyone—”

 

“So?”

 

“There’s not going to be anyone left to drink in your bar pretty soon,” Mashra says. “And if you don’t pay the debts…”

 

A storm cloud passes over Ergel’s face, brows knitted and thin lips downturned. Absently, he scratches at the week’s worth of stubble on his cheeks and jaw.

 

“There’s plenty of good work on other planets.” Rey attempts to keep the anxiety from her voice, but it still trembles, just a little. She’s seen the electroprods that Constable Zuvio and his band of Kyuzos carry around, and she’s seen what happens when a body comes in contact with the end of those electroprods. It isn’t pretty; she'd rather not take them on, if she doesn't have to. “You’ve heard of Rinnrivin Di, haven’t you?”

 

Mashra nods, and, glancing between the two of them, Ergel’s expression grows even darker. Surely he can sense that they’re conspiring, but still Rey marvels in how much her father’s laziness and pride prevent him from acknowledging the severity of his problems. Stupid stubborn man.

 

“Over on Bastatha,” he says, in a suspicious tone. “Runs a cartel.”

 

“A very successful one, that is _always_ looking for good men.” Mashra takes a tentative sip of her knockback nectar, then coughs, recoiling at its acrid burn.

 

Rey pats her back. When her father casts an appraising eye her way, she adds, “Bastatha was on the side of the Empire in the Civil War, pa, remember? Rinnrivin Di likes hiring former Imperial soldiers, everyone says so. They say he likes it ‘cause it makes him feel patriotic.”

 

“Don’t lecture me on history, girlie.” That’s her father’s only response. He pulls the jug of rotgut back out, pouring himself another full glass. Takes a sip. Ponders for a moment. Then: “What do you think, Ver?”

 

Across the room in one of the rickety chairs sits Verla, feet propped up on a table, nursing a cocktail and pointedly ignoring them all. She looks up from her datapad upon hearing her name. “I don’t give a Psadan's patoot, pa.”

 

He snorts at that, then sips for a while more, still stewing. Finally: “I’ll think about it.”

 

“Don’t think for too long,” says Mashra, with a wag of her long hairy finger. “Crolutes are infamous for their impatience, and we all know Unkar’s the worst of his lot.”

 

“That’s enough talkin’ about unpleasant things,” Ergel replies, brusquely. “Mashra, you came all this way out here, you goin’ to play me in a couple hands of sabacc or not?”

 

Mashra rolls her eyes, and Rey does too. When Ergel says the conversation is over, there’s no reaching him; he becomes like an ion wall, and not a word about the topic will get past. All they can do now is hope that he’ll see reason, eventually.

 

“Fine,” she concedes. “Two hands. But _no_ betting, Ergel.”

 

“Spoilsport.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Three standard days later, an advertisement goes up on the HoloNet:

 

For Sale: Ergel’s Bar, Cratertown, Jakku. Cantina with built-in client base, reputable establishment. Building and twelve square kilometers of land. Asking Price: 20,000 credits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're off! THANK YOU AGAIN TO [MIXY](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado)! Some links? 
> 
> What are the [Melitto](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Melitto) and what is a [chitin plate](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chitin/Legends)? [It's an insect-y shell thing.] What are the [Abednedo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Abednedo_\(species\))? [Kyuzo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kyuzo)? [Hutt](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hutt)?
> 
> What's an [eyeblaster](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Eyeblaster), [rotgut](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rotgut), and [pastebread](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pastebread)?
> 
> What are [bloggins](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bloggin), [nightwatcher worms](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nightwatcher_worm), and [pole-snakes](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pole-snake)?
> 
> Some technology? We got a [comlink](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Comlink/Legends), a [glowrod](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Glowrod), an autojuke, an [ion wall](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ion_Wall), and a [HoloNet](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/HoloNet/Legends)! 
> 
> What is [jizz](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jizz) music? ;)
> 
> Weapons! Rey's [quarterstaff](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey's_quarterstaff), the [electroprods](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Electroprod), and a [blaster pistol](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blaster_pistol)!
> 
> [Rey's speeder](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rey's_speeder)! And its many parts: [turbojet engine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Turbofan), [afterburners](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Afterburner), and [repulsorlift](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Repulsorlift)! What's a [swoop bike](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Swoop)? A [starfighter](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starfighter)? Did you know that Rey's AT-AT home is a [Hellhound Two](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hellhound_Two)?
> 
> Who is [Mashra](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mashra)? [Okay, confession time. I swear, the last time I looked up Mashra on wookieepedia she did not have a species, but when I checked back tonight I was informed she is an [Aqualish](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aqualish). They are... horrifyingly arachnid to me, and Mashra is supposed to be like Rey's maternal figure. So, my bad. But also, she's staying Abednedo.]
> 
> Who is [Rinnrivin Di](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rinnrivin_Di) and what's up with his [cartel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rinnrivin_Di%27s_cartel)? Who is [Zuvio](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Zuvio)?
> 
> What's a [Veda pearl](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Veda_pearl)?
> 
> Where are the [Goazon Badlands](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Goazon_Badlands), the [Sinking Fields](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sinking_Fields), the [Fallen Teeth](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fallen_Teeth), and [Tuanul](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tuanul)? Where is [Jakku](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jakku_system), [Bastatha](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bastatha), and the [Outer Rim](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Outer_Rim_Territories)?
> 
> What's the [Church of the Force](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Church_of_the_Force)? What's the [Niima Outpost Militia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Niima_Outpost_Militia)?
> 
> What's [Corellian Spike](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Spike)?
> 
> What's [transparisteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Transparisteel/Legends), [durasteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Durasteel), and [tsu-seed](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tsu-seed)?
> 
> OKAY. That's all I got, for this chapter. I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading! ❤️


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “… and as she walked along a favourite grove, said, with a gentle sigh, ‘A few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.’” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**42 ABY.**

 

“Bastatha is a _very_ important place,” Ergel declares a week later, all seriousness and not a hint of irony, as if he is one of the Tuanul monks issuing a sermon on the Force. “It was a key Imperial ally during the First Civil War, and if not for the blasted Alliance it would undoubtedly be one of the _most_ prominent planets in the galaxy! The people on _Bastatha_ have certainly never fallen in with all this New Republic rubbish.”

 

“That’s right, pa.” Rey is cautious; her tone mild, she keeps her eyes trained on the air conditioner she has disassembled on top of one of the barroom tables. Despite whatever irritation she feels at Ergel and his pompous tone, she’s not getting sucked into a debate.

 

“We’ll be rather celebrated there, I wager, what with my sterling record on the Coruscant Security Force, and then with the Imperial Navy.”

 

Her irritation swells. _An administrator,_ thinks Rey. _A desk jockey. A form filler and a data processor. You’re no hero._

 

But it deflates just as quickly, so she remains silent and simply nods. She has more important things to worry about anyway, like how she’s going to repair the busted thermostatic expansion valve, and how she’s going to quell the dread she feels at moving into the fetid underground tunnels of Bastatha. It’s their best option, Rey knows that, and it might just be the only one that saves her from a return to salvaging… but that doesn’t mean she has to like it. Still, she reminds herself as she digs around in her tool-kit for spare parts, she should put on a good face. For her family.

 

Mashra, who has been diligently visiting at least once a day since her and Rey’s meeting, gives an approving hum. She’s perched on one of the barstools, typing intently on the datapad in her wrinkled hands. “They’ll welcome you with open arms,” she says, distracted, “and they’ll be very happy to employ you, I’m sure of it.”

 

“I should think so,” Ergel sniffs, “After all, we _are_ descended from Contisp—”

 

“Any potential buyers get in touch yet, Mashra?” Rey chimes in, unable to listen to her father’s lecture on their family tree for the umpteenth time.

 

“Hm, a few. But they’ve all sent offers of much less than what we’ve advertised. Insultingly less, really. Only one even bothered to match our advertised price.” A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles are perched on the end of her snout; absently, absorbed in her correspondence, she takes a sip of the Endorian sunberry wine Ergel has poured for her. “Oh, that’s a _very_ nice vintage. Bravo, Ergel.”

 

He winks at her. “Anything for our esteemed real estate agent.” Then he returns to his shuffling of the deck of sabacc cards in his hands.

 

“And… message sent,” she says, after another minute’s worth of typing. “I’ve invited him to come visit the place. Hopefully we’ll hear back soon.”

 

“Good. Sooner we sell this dump and get ourselves to Bastatha, the better,” Ergel decrees.

 

Rey could scream. She really could, hearing him disparage the cantina her late mother helped to build. Instead, through clenched teeth, she offers only the weakest of protests. “Ma loved this place, though…”

 

“Who’s the prospective buyer?” drawls Verla. Slouched in a chair beside Rey’s makeshift worktable, she occupies herself with filing her nails. Business is always slow at Ergel’s Bar, but this is the third day in a row without a single customer; Rey’s sister has stopped pretending she’s not interested in the proceedings. Even _Verla’s_ propensity for doing nothing has reached its limit.

 

“Well…” Mashra takes a deep swallow of her wine, as if to buy herself some time. “That’s the thing. I’ll tell you, but… you all have to remain calm. Rational. Can you manage that?”

 

“Me? I’m always rational,” Ergel says.

 

A snort escapes her. Three sets of sharp eyes cut her way. Verla quirks an eyebrow, and Rey can see it, how she’s already gearing up to deliver some derisive retort to whatever Rey’s opinion may be. So— knowing that none of them care at all about the inner workings of an air conditioner— she remarks, “Oh, the… expansion… valve! I figured out the problem, it’s the compress—”

 

“We’re all adults here Mashra, there’s no need to coddle us,” Verla snaps, waspish. “Tell us who it is.”

 

“Of course,” the Abednedo sighs. “Apologies. The buyer is Luke Skywalker.”

 

_CLUNK._

 

In the hush that follows those words, accentuated by the nearby vaporator and the squeak of the ancient ceiling fans, the dull sound of Ergel’s glass slamming down onto the bar is thunderous. Ominous.

 

“Absolutely _not_ ,” he hisses. Without another word, he turns on his heel and storms off towards the back of the bar, where a sagging, crooked staircase leads up to their apartment.

 

Stunned, Rey looks at Mashra. Mashra looks at Rey. Verla continues filing her nails.

 

The tension draws on and on, ever-tighter, both of them dejectedly listening to Ergel’s heavy footfall as he stomps up the stairs and begins pacing the floors overhead.

 

At last, Verla rolls her eyes. “A New Republic war hero? Great job, Mashra,” she jeers. “Real smooth.”

 

Mashra removes her glasses, runs her fingers over the sleek, dappled surface of her bald head. Tiredly, she scratches the wide valley of snout between her protruding eyes. When she exhales a heavy sigh, there’s no mistaking the tenor of the sound, even with her impassive expression.

 

It sounds like defeat.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Hours later, after Mashra has gone home and Verla has sequestered herself in her bedroom for a nap, Rey brings Ergel up a plate of protato curls, his favorite snack.

 

“Pa,” she says, rapping her knuckles lightly on his bedroom door. “You should eat something.”

 

“Not hungry,” he grunts back.

 

“Can I come in?”

 

There’s a long pause, and then she hears, faintly, as though he’s muttered it: “Suit yourself.”

 

The door slides back into the wall with the press of a button to its control panel. Inside, Rey finds Ergel seated in his conform lounger by the grimy bedroom window, staring sullenly at his portable hologame table. Atop it, the flickering holomonsters of a dejarik game fidget and growl restlessly, bored of standing in their starting positions. After she’s handed him the plate, Rey grabs a nearby wooden footstool and places it across the table from him. Then she sits.

 

“Wanna play?” She pokes at her side’s K'lor'slug figure, and huffs with amusement when it gives a tiny disgruntled roar.

 

“I ‘spose we can,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “But I don’t want to hear one word about that Rebel scum, or his dang-blamed offer. Hear me?”

 

“Sure, pa,” Rey sighs. “My lips are sealed.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

It’s Verla who cracks first. Two days later, they’re sitting around the kitchen table with their breakfast gruel, in their customary strained silence, when suddenly, she lets out an exasperated groan.

 

“Y’know, _pa_ ,” she snaps, “the Jedi helped to bring about the Empire, in their own way. And we all _know_ who his father is. And what’s more, if _you_ weren’t so damned bad at gambling, we wouldn’t even be _in_ this mess in the first place!”

 

With that, she shoots up from the table, throws her bowl— still half-full of her mealy breakfast— in the sink, and flounces off towards her bedroom.

 

Rey meets Ergel’s gaze. She blinks twice, trying to think of something that will smooth things over.

 

“Don’t,” he growls, reaching for his mug of caf.

 

So she doesn’t.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The day after Verla’s blow-up, some half-starved Human salvager wanders into their bar in the early afternoon, begging for water. Ergel offers to play him for it; if he wins, the salvager has to hand over everything in his knapsack— which amounts to a few starfighter engine parts, a melted ration bar, and about two kilos of sand— and if the salvager wins, he’ll have all the water he can drink.

 

Ergel loses, of course. The salvager, who introduces himself as Corwin once they’re seated at a table, playing cards in hand, tells Ergel he doesn’t want to talk about where he’s from. Ergel shrugs his acceptance, but Rey can see that it irks him.

 

Even so, they must find some common ground to bond over, because she overhears a snippet of their conversation later, as she’s fiddling with the still-busted expansion valve; they sound like old friends, gossiping about the galaxy’s hottest celebrities. They’ve had a few rounds of potent Sarlacc Kickers by that point, and Ergel’s tone is cavalier, his slouched posture that of a man completely at ease.

 

Apropos of nothing— after refusing to discuss the Skywalker issue for _days—_ he informs Corwin: “He’s the son of Darth Vader, y’know. Luke kriffing Skywalker. And he’s interested in buying _this_ place. Can you imagine?”

 

Corwin beams, a gap-toothed grin that creases his sunburnt cheeks. “Lucky. You should double your asking price, whatever it is. Can you imagine what the place’ll be worth, once it’s owned by a legend like him?”

 

“The son of a legend,” Ergel corrects, in a haughty tone, although he’s beaming too. “But it’ll suffice.”

 

Rey tries to understand the expression on her father’s grizzled face at that moment— his narrowed eyes, his rough chuckle, his wide grin— and only one word comes to mind.

 

Conniving.

 

 

. . .

 

 

"’I have sold my bar to Master Skywalker,’" sounds pretty dag good, don’t you think?”

 

Rey gives an inattentive thumbs-up, then continues her adjustment to the air conditioner’s compressor. She’s almost got the damned thing licked back into shape.

 

“Rinnrivin Di will be very impressed, when he learns that I fleeced the legendary Luke Skywalker out of _forty_ thousand credits,” Ergel continues, mixing himself an Eyeblaster. “It’s a brilliant plan, girlie; I really can’t lose. It’ll make me look good to the cartel, the Jedi won’t know the difference, and I’ll make a tidy profit—”

 

“Which you have to hand over to Unkar Plutt,” she reminds him, with a final twist of her screwdriver.

 

“Oh, stop ruining it.”

 

Rey glances over at her father; he’s posted up against the bar, looking far too self-satisfied. The salvager, Corwin, sits at the other side, elbow on the counter, also wearing a smug grin.

 

She knows it’s useless. She knows how Ergel is. But she can’t help herself, especially when she sees him gloating like this. “They say he’s a hero, pa,” she mutters. “That he saved the New Republic.”

 

He snickers, and Corwin does too. “Quite right, quite right. And _that’s_ why he’s gonna pay double.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The next night, five days after Mashra initially informed them of Skywalker’s offer, Rey feels as though she is crawling out of her skin. She’s been tinkering endlessly in an attempt to fix the damned air-conditioner, in-between doing her best to tidy up the bar and their apartment for their potential buyer. Verla has been of no help, of course, and Ergel has spent most of his time plotting with Corwin, who has conspicuously _not_ left Cratertown, seemingly content to hang around Ergel’s Bar and drink for free until they pack up and leave.

 

Now, the bar is blessedly cool. The air-conditioner purrs once more from its station, fixed in the transom window above the front entrance, blowing brisk air through the barroom. Not a speck of dust can be seen on the long steelcrete bar or the scattered chairs and tables; the ferrocrete floor is swept clean of the miniature sand dunes that habitually sneak their way inside. The place shines. Or at least, it shines as much as it ever will.

 

Rey is exhausted.

 

“I’m going for a ride,” she tells Verla and Ergel; they do not even look away from their dejarik game. Corwin, who’s been spectating and cheering her father on, offers her a disinterested smile. Ergel waves half-heartedly in her general direction.

 

Unlike her last moonlit ride, this time Rey must use the floodlights affixed to the front of her speeder; a thick blanket of mauve clouds hang low overhead, and as she zooms through the dark, the wind gusts hard against her, blowing grit at her covered face and threatening to drive her off course.

 

Still. It’s worth the hassle. When she settles into the old hammock inside her AT-AT— rough-hewn Alliance pilot doll clutched to her chest— the tension she’s been carrying in her wiry muscles and the hard clench of anxiety in her stomach finally begin to ease.

 

Rey breathes in deeply, savoring the familiar smell of rusting durasteel, cracked gorraslug leather seats, and the dessicated bouquet of long-dead nightbloomers she’s never had the heart to throw away, which hang by a strand of copper wire above her hammock. (She does _not_ think about the day he gave her that bouquet, the slight tremor in his giant hand, his shy smile—)

 

For a little while, she feels safe, and… not quite happy, exactly, but… content. There’s still some solace, here in her childhood abode, with her childhood things about her.

 

Gradually, another sound cuts through the wind’s high-pitched screech: the drone of an approaching speeder. The tension returns to her muscles, the anxiety resumes its churning of her stomach’s contents; someone is coming. She scrambles to kill the glowrod she propped up on the floor, then holds her breath, waiting and praying that whoever it is, they will pass her by.

 

They don’t. The buzz of their engine grows increasingly louder; Rey marks the change in pitch when it is downshifted, then the absence of sound when it is cut off. Close, wherever the interloper is, they’re very close. And sure enough, not a minute later, from the darkened entrance of her little home, she hears:

 

“Rey. I know you’re there—I saw your floodlights, earlier.”

 

To her relief and her disappointment, she recognizes the deep feminine voice, but it isn’t the one that for a wild, irrational second she’d hoped she might hear. (It isn’t his, although she can still remember the way he said her name. How wonderful it sounded, in his deep baritone.)

 

No, it’s only Mashra. A flick of Rey’s thumb across the activator reveals the towering Abednedo in the yellowed beam of her glowrod, crouched nearly in half to fit through the hole in the hull.

 

“May I join you?”

 

“Sure,” she says, since any other reply seems rude.

 

Mashra clambers in, pulling the heavy trap door closed behind her. “You’re letting sand in. What are you doing out here, at this time of night?”

 

Rey gives a tired heave of her shoulders, blinking back tears borne from weariness and frustration. Mashra spies them anyway, and her face falls.

 

“Oh, _Rey_ ,” she huffs, taking in Rey’s fetal position, the doll in her arms. Is that guilt in her dark piscine eyes? Is that a quiver in the lips of her snout, does her sympathetic grimace seem just the slightest bit tremulous? Rey can never be sure, with Mashra.

 

“So. You heard about Ergel’s decision, then—to take Skywalker’s offer.” At Rey’s nod, Mashra settles herself on the floor beside her. Gently, with one hand, she begins to rock the hammock, back and forth. Back and forth. Rey lets her eyes sink closed. “It’s for the best, you know,” Mashra says, in a low, sad voice.

 

“I wish we could stay here, on Jakku. There are…” she swallows, forcing the next words out around the horrible tightness in her throat, “…so many memories, here.”

 

“I know. I wish that too, for you.”

 

“Have you spoken to… Master Sk—ywalker?” Despite her best efforts, her voice breaks on the name.

 

“Yes. He’ll be in Cratertown tomorrow.”

 

“Did he say anything about… about…”

 

“No, of course not,” Mashra assures her. “There was no reason to discuss your families. I cannot even be sure if he’s _aware_ of your history with his nephew. Not to worry, dear, we stuck to business.”

 

“Mashra,” she gasps, breathless, “I can’t help thinking… sometimes… I—I might have been happy, if I’d only just… if I hadn’t been… persuaded to…”

 

She tries to keep going, but only a small, broken sob comes out.

 

“Oh, dear,” Mashra pauses, running a hand over Rey’s tousled hair. “You were… how old? Nineteen? So young, back then. You didn’t know your own mind and—and… he was a smuggler, Rey. Like his father. A vagabond. And the grandson of—”

 

“Yes, of course,” she replies. “I know that.”

 

An uncomfortable pause follows. The wind's groan, muted by the AT-AT’s heavy hull, carries on outside. At length, Mashra asks:

 

“Have you… followed the news of him? His deeds, I mean, during the war?”

 

“No. I couldn’t bear to.”

 

A sigh. “Child.” Rey opens her eyes; Mashra gives a small shake of her head, continues smoothing her calloused hand over Rey’s hair. It feels nice. Helps, even. A little. “You made the right choice. A _wise_ choice. You needed to wait for your family. You deserved better. You _deserve_ better! It was… it was an inappropriate match, my dear.”

 

“Yes,” she says, wrestling to keep the emotion in her voice contained. It’s no use, even to her own ears she sounds strained, choked, on the edge of a breakdown. “Yes. So you have said, Mashra.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“So he’s a Jedi and a pilot. So what? Like it’s difficult?” Ergel sneers, the next afternoon, as he, Mashra, Verla, Corwin, and Rey sit around the bar, awaiting their guest’s arrival. The air-conditioner hums merrily above the entrance, and the air inside is cool, crisp.

 

Rey’s leg bounces under the table of its own volition. Verla has grown bored enough, what with their complete customer drought, that she’s reduced herself to playing sabacc with her sister and their guest; the women and Corwin sit around one of the bar’s smaller tables, each studying their hand.

 

Waiting for Verla to make a play, Rey unleashes a nervous tumble of thoughts that, normally, she would never share with her family. “We’re all in their debt, y’know. I would’ve liked to be a pilot for the New Republic. Bet I could’ve joined the war, defended the galaxy against the First Order.”

 

Verla and Ergel snort in perfect harmony; even Mashra gives a bemused huff.

 

“You? What do _you_ know about flying?” Verla asks, putting down her card and picking up another from the pile. “You’ve never even been off-world.”

 

Rey picks up two cards. “I spent years teaching myself, with old flight simulators I found in the Starship Graveya—”

 

“Yes fine.” Ergel cuts her off, as he always does whenever Rey brings up life during his absence. “The navy’s all well and good, R’iia knows we need it, but I don’t particularly like the way it fills young people’s minds with nonsense, thinking that any old farmboy can just show up from some backwater planet like Tatooine and they’ll become a… a… Jedi, or an Admiral, or some other bumblefluff. That’s not how it _works_. You don’t just _become_ that, those positions should be chosen, for those who are _born_ to do that kinda thing.”

 

And what Rey wants to say is: I’d bet every credit in the galaxy that you’re only saying that because that’s not how it worked for _you_ , when you reported for duty from Vandor-3, and everyone laughed at your backrocket ways, at your barvy claims to aristocratic lineage. Because you were too mediocre to rise very high through the ranks, too lazy and too unlikeable, and it left you bitter.

 

What she says instead is: “Sure, pa.”

 

“C’mon,” Ergel turns now to appeal to Mashra, who has held her tongue for the duration of the conversation. “Piloting starfighters?” He hesitates, eyes sliding towards Rey, lip curled in disdain. “Any idiot could do it.”

 

Rey resists the bait, and turns back to the sabacc game. They’re all a little on edge today, that’s all. She’s sure he didn’t mean anything with his words, even if they _did_ land on her frayed nerves like a direct hit.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Luke Skywalker,” says Mashra, warmly, her large hand swallowing Luke’s when they both reach forward to shake, in greeting. “An honor.”

 

“Me? Not at all. The real honor is meeting her,” Luke jokes, tipping his head sideways towards the statuesque redhead who has accompanied him. “This is my wife, Mara.”

 

Mara’s luminous green eyes sweep across the barroom, taking them all in; she lingers on Rey, her full lips pursed, as though in contemplation of Rey’s appearance. She’s an intimidatingly beautiful woman, and at once, Rey feels cowed. When she speaks, her voice is as deep as it is musical, lilting with a Coruscanti accent. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. What a… lovely… bar, this is.”

 

And despite her careful choice of words, there’s no irony in her tone. Simply kindness. Rey just barely restrains her scoff; looking around the shabby interior, she knows it’s anything but.

 

Her gaze returns to Rey. Again, when she addresses her, she sounds sincere; although Rey would not blame her if she wasn’t. “I’m especially pleased to finally meet _you_ , Rey.”

 

Rey gawks at her, jaw hanging. Have Luke and his nephew spoken about her? She’d thought, when Mashra assured her that she’d discussed only business with the Jedi, that she might escape this meeting unscathed. A hot flush travels up her cheeks, her stomach turns over; she cannot think of a single socially acceptable thing to say. Haltingly, she nods.

 

“Yes, well,” Ergel blusters, “Come in, come in. Have a seat. Rey, pour us all a round of my best knockback nectar, will you?” He ushers them towards a table, and Rey wonders if he misses the knowing look Luke and Mara share, or if he purposely ignores it. Either way, she passes to the bar, and does as he’s asked.

 

And as she pours, she eavesdrops. Luke begins to tell them what sounds like a censored version of the couple’s past: they met during the First Galactic Civil War, found themselves thrown together often— as two of the New Republic’s most powerful Force users— fell in love over the course of countless missions and battles. They married right before the New Republic declared war on the First Order, about eighteen years ago, and now they are more than ready to hang up their pilot helmets, and finally found the Jedi Praxeum they’ve been dreaming of building together. Remake the Jedi Order. Try, in a more pacifist way, to bring balance to the Force, and the galaxy.

 

As Luke speaks, Ergel and Verla hum in eager agreement, obsequiously throwing in compliments wherever they can. Corwin, hanging onto the table at Ergel’s elbow, grins and nods along.

 

Mashra seems somewhat less eager to please. “Why Jakku?” she asks, accepting the glass of knockback nectar Rey hands her with an appreciative nod. “Sounds like you could start this school of yours anywhere.”

 

Luke’s piercing blue eyes land on Rey. For a moment— too long, she thinks, nervously tapping her fingers on the empty tray in her hands— he considers her, before turning back to Mashra. “We were drawn to this planet. There’s a feeling of life here, buried beneath the dunes. Maybe it’s the… history, of the place.”

 

Mashra has followed Luke’s gaze; her wide brow furrows, at where it has landed. And at the implication in his words. “History,” she echoes, sounding unsettled. “The… Imperial history, I presume?”

 

“Sure,” says Luke, shrugging. “And the Church of the Force, out in Tuanul.”

 

Rey takes her seat on one of the barstools, sips gingerly at her own drink. She’s not sure what she was expecting; she knows it’s vile, and accordingly, as the acrid sourness burns her throat on its way down, she winces. There’s an awkward beat, a moment where no one appears to know what to say.

 

It’s Mara who gets the ball rolling again. “Now that the First Order has essentially been defeated, soldiers and pilots will start returning to their homeworlds. We’re hoping that those who have discovered or developed a sensitivity to the Force—” Here Ergel snorts, then tries to hide it in a cough. Mara eyes him leerily for a moment, before continuing, “—they’ll find their way here.” She gags loudly, upon trying the knockback nectar, and although she politely swallows the mouthful, she pushes the rest of the drink in Luke’s direction. Rey catches him trying to hide his laughter. Rolling her eyes, Mara ruffles his shaggy grey hair.

 

“We flew over a bit of the planet, earlier. Jakku reminds me of my own homeworld, Tatooine,” Luke muses. “But without all the painful memories, of course.” Mara nods at that, and pushes the offending glass of liquor a little closer to him with a sly smile, which makes him laugh in earnest.

 

“Is an old cantina really the right place to turn into a school?” Rey wonders aloud; for her troubles, she receives a hissed _‘quiet, girlie,’_ from Ergel.

 

But Mara just laughs, wryly, and takes another look around the place. “Maybe, maybe not. We like it though, don’t we Luke?”

 

“Sure,” he repeats. “Er… rustic.”

 

“Rustic,” says Ergel, bluffing, “Uh, yeah… that’s, uh… that’s what we were going for.”

 

A bit more stilted small talk follows, before Ergel briefly shows them around the second-floor living space. Then it’s decided— and when Rey thinks back on it later, she can’t remember how exactly everyone seemed to agree this was a good idea, only that they all fell into a strangely harmonious accord, all at once— that Rey will give Luke and Mara a tour around the property, such that it is.

 

And so, Jedi in tow, she sets out to do just that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“This is the vaporator,” she tells them, pointing to the tall, spindly machine. “It’s industrial sized, big enough to produce water for my family and our patrons.”

 

A soft frown pulls at Luke’s mouth. “I remember them well,” he says, sighing. “Grew up on a moisture farm, you know. I spent a lot of time with these things.”

 

“Er, right. So… you know how it works?”

 

Mara takes his hand when he nods and looks off into the distance. Pulling him close, she lays a soft kiss on his cheek. Then she turns to Rey. “Could you show us the rest?”

 

Rey consents with a dip of her chin, and begins walking. Surreptitiously, in stolen glances, she studies the casual affection they show one another: the way Mara brushes Luke’s hair away from his eyes, the way he leans in toward her, resting his head against hers.

 

“The Sko'rraq Mountains,” she rasps, pointing to the sharp-ridged range that rises up to the north of Cratertown. Both Jedi turn their heads to look, although Rey notices that Mara’s is tilted, as if she is listening to something that Rey can’t hear, or maybe, she is listening to the words that Rey has not spoken.

 

They’re headed due west. To their left, the sky is a brilliant, fiery orange. “If you walk in that direction a ways,” Rey says, thumbing towards the sinking sun, “you’ll reach Old Meru’s. It’s a campsite settlement, for the anchorites making the trek along Pilgrim’s Road.”

 

“Hm,” is all Luke says.

 

“Rey,” Mara begins, then hesitates. She and Luke exchange a loaded look, and when he nods, she does as well. Her green eyes once more riveted to Rey’s, she asks, “Do you ever… feel as though there is something inside yourself? Some sense, a connection maybe, to the world around you?”

 

Immediately, she knows what Mara is getting at. (After all, he used to talk about this too, didn’t he?) She’s spoken with the anchorites who live outside of Tuanul, heard them commune about the Force in rushed whispers. From Luke and Mara’s hints, she’s gathered that they might be interested in her for this reason.

 

(She remembers that thrill of discovery, of learning together, during their brief affair. And after, when it was all done, how it had become a burden.) For a brief instant, she contemplates feigning ignorance, but then she considers the possibility that they might bring _him_ up, if she does. That they might speak his name.

 

So she simply replies, “Yes.”

 

And it’s true. She _had_ always felt it, the rhythms of Jakku— the Vworkka soaring high above her head, the nightwatcher worms slithering through the sand meters below her feet, the bones drying out in the scalding sun, the ghost of the water that used to keep this planet verdant, the way that life, vicious and snarling though it may be, seemed held together in a kind of balance— she’d always felt… attuned to it, somewhere in the back of her mind.

 

(He’d noticed that about her, right away. And when he left, she’d walled off that part of herself. Now, she still understands the delicate balance of Jakku. But it no longer moves within her.)

 

Mara smiles. “You know what that is?”

 

“The Force,” she says.

 

“Maybe… you should come back to Jakku, once our little school is set up. I think there could be a place for you here.”

 

Rey swallows hard at that. She hazards a glance at Luke— the legendary Luke Skywalker, who took down the Empire, who has just finished taking down the First Order’s sad attempt at mounting a new Empire— and affably, he nods his agreement. Inside, she quakes.

 

“There,” she points out, not trusting herself to respond to the invitation, “is the edge of Namenthe’s Crater. There’s how Cratertown got its name.”

 

“And how did the crater get _its_ name?” Luke’s mouth quirks up on one side, boyishly. She wonders if he’s teasing her. Yet there’s something about his tone— soft, almost consoling— that suggests it’s not amusement he feels for her, but pity.

 

“From a salvager who was messing around with proton bombs,” she says. “Dropped ‘em, created a new landmark.”

 

“Scavenging seems like a very difficult way to sustain oneself,” Mara notes, studying Rey’s face. “Hard on the body, and the spirit.”

 

Now it is her turn to look off in the distance; Mara and Luke make her feel too visible, like they can see past her skull, into her mind… like they know all her secrets.

 

“Can be,” she replies, terse. Then, because she doesn’t think she’ll get another chance to speak with them alone, and because she’s dying of curiosity, and because so far they have been shockingly kind to her, she blurts out: “There’s something I’ve been trying to understand—this is a barren planet.”

 

Mara’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. She affirms this, with an amiable, “Mmhmm?”

 

“You could build your school _anywhere_ , here on Jakku. It belongs to nobody. So why buy the bar, and the land?”

 

It’s Luke who answers. First with a rueful laugh, and then: “I recognized the planet, when I saw the advertisement. Jakku.” He wraps his arm around Mara’s shoulders, she leans into the embrace. “And… I seemed to recall, that a relative of mine told me, once, about someone he knew here. That this… someone… had a family they were waiting for. I only had to make a few inquiries to find out that the Ergel of Ergel’s Bar was, as I suspected, related to that someone.”

 

Rey’s lip trembles. Her eyes burn. He knows. Luke _knows_. And he’s told Mara. _They know._ What must they think of her? Her scalp itches, is that strange? Her stomach is lying down on the ground by her feet, her heart has climbed up into her throat. Who else knows? Has the whole galaxy learned of her inconstancy, of the promise she broke? She stares at the blazing sunset, in the hopes that it will burn away the gathering tears. Maybe she hopes it’ll burn her away too, or at least, burn away this horrible shame that squirms in her chest.

 

(Does he think of her, ever? Does he remember her as she was, at nineteen, not yet sapped of all her vivacity by the desert? Does he envision her with youthful dewy skin and eyes shining with hope? Does he know that she’s been here, all along? Does he have regrets?)

 

Rey thinks she might be sick. She wraps her arms around herself, a defensive measure. Finally, when trusts herself to speak, she asks, “Is that why you’re here? You… pity me?”

 

Again, a look passes between the couple. Mara turns to the sun as well; slowly, cautiously, as one draws near a wounded animal, she reaches out and rests her hand on Rey’s shoulder.

 

The only one who ever touches Rey anymore is Mashra, and even then, it is only fleeting. Affection is not in an Abednedo’s nature, and Rey knows those sporadic touches are for her benefit, not Mashra’s. And so Mara’s hand on her shoulder is like a searing brand, a heavy anchor.

 

“The place where the Empire died,” Mara murmurs, “it seems like…” she trails off, staring at the sunset thoughtfully.

 

For a moment, they all do. In the distance, a lone steelpecker caws hungrily, no doubt circling its carrion supper.

 

“Sometimes,” says Luke, at last, “not _always_ , but sometimes… right on top of the bones of the past—that’s as good a place as any to rebuild.”

 

Rey shrinks further into herself, a feat she hadn’t thought possible. Luke offers her a small rueful smile, and does not comment on the anguish that— she imagines— is stamped across her face. When it becomes clear she has nothing to add, he clears his throat.

 

“We should get back to the ship before sundown. They’re expecting us, in Tuanul.”

 

They don’t speak again until they’re standing by the ramp of the Jade-Skywalker’s shuttle, a lightweight thing that has the look of a diplomatic transport.

 

“Go on ahead,” Mara says to Luke, jerking her chin towards the cockpit, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

 

“Hm,” he replies. “It was nice to meet you, Rey of Jakku.” He gives her a half-hearted little salute, then ambles up the ramp, disappearing into the craft.

 

“There’s a lot of stories about him on the HoloNet.” Rey whirls to face the Jedi. In a bid to cover her embarrassing eagerness, she crosses her arms and averts her gaze. Mara inhales deeply, and on the exhale, she sighs, “His nephew, that is.”

 

“I… don’t know…” she attempts to lie.

 

“Nothing about his personal life,” Mara presses on. “But… he’s a Captain now, really moved up in the galaxy. You should see for yourself.”

 

A Captain. This is the closest she’s come to hearing his name spoken aloud in years. Mashra had not been so cruel as to belabor the point, once he’d left, and her family hadn’t cared enough to ask, once they’d returned.

 

The wan echo of it tolls within her now; as Mara pulls her close, murmuring a reminder to consider their offer, as the Jedi climbs up the ramp, as it closes behind her, as the couple waves goodbye to her from the cockpit, as the shuttle jolts to life— rising from the ground, its thrusters glowing a radiant ion blue— as they whoosh off into the darkening sky, leaving Rey standing on the edge of Cratertown, feeling small and alone.

 

It’s often said that a bell cannot be unrung. And his name— carried on the dry westerly winds of Jakku— whips around her, pulling at stray tendrils of her hair, fluttering through the tails of her drapey linen tunic.

 

Mara did not ring the bell, but that hardly matters. She didn’t need to. The bell was rung eight years ago; its ringing has reverberated in Rey’s ears ever since.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey gets two steps inside Ergel’s Bar when conversation, her father and Mashra’s, hits her like the suffocating grit and haze of a sandstorm.

 

“I think he cut a fine figure, to be honest,” Mashra is saying, and her father is chuckling, they both are, and in a condescending tone, he adds:

 

“He’s not descended from anyone so important as Contispex the First, but… I have to hand it to him, he’s got a pretty wife. And yes alright, _very_ fine clothes.”

 

Shooting a vindictive little smile in Rey’s direction, Verla notes, “A childless old witch is just the kind of person you want buying the place. She’ll keep it clean, and who knows? Should we decide to return to Jakku one day, the bar’ll be waiting for us in good shape.”

 

“Should… _decide_?” That’s all Rey can get out; she’s furious, her voice an indignant little squeak. “… _Waiting_?”

 

“She’s only joking, Rey,” Mashra chides.

 

“All in good fun,” Verla agrees, in a placid tone that sets her teeth on edge.

 

“In any case,” says Ergel, dismissing Rey’s sputtering with a roll of his eyes, “I think we should go higher than forty. Did you hear them talking about the… _‘Force’_ ? If they believe in _that_ bantha fodder, we can sell ‘em anything.”

 

Tonight, Rey doesn’t bother telling them that she’s leaving. She’s too disgusted. Her cowl and goggles hang from a hook by the door, along with the old bloggin-leather jacket she made by hand as a teenager, to protect herself against the raw Jakku nights. She grabs them all in an angry fist, then she’s out the door. One step, two, three, and— thankfully— the repulsorlifts dutifully keep her speeder from sinking down to the ground, when she throws herself up onto its seat. Hastily, she yanks on the garments.

 

And then she’s off.

 

From Cratertown, the ride to the Starship Graveyard takes longer than it does to Niima Outpost or her old AT-AT. Maybe an hour and a half. She conducts it in silence; just her and the rattle and buzz of her engine and afterburners and the wind— ever-present, whistling his name in her ears, sending the dunes walking across the face of the planet, every night they shift and stretch and slink along, like living beasts— and out in front, her floodlights like twin antennae, reaching over the endless stretch of sand, guiding the way.

 

She’s taking herself her back to the place where it all ended, where the bones lie. Where she lost some of her hope, a thing she’d once thought was inexhaustible; where she began to lose him, the man she’d once thought would never leave her.

 

She mustn’t cry. She must _not_ cry.

 

But she could.

 

How many tears has she already spilled? Rey ponders it, as she brings her speeder to a halt inside one of the main docking bays of the _Ravager_ , a behemoth of a decaying ship, an _Executor_ -class Star Dreadnought. Nineteen kilometers in length, equipped with thirteen giant, useless engine thrusters, meters upon meters high but deceptive, from the outside, because it has been slowly listing deeper and deeper into the sand since the day it crash-landed here.

 

Could she fill the _Ravager_ , with her tears? She locks the speeder down, then slips through the toppled, destroyed TIE fighters and interceptors that litter the tilted floor.

 

Could she fill this hangar, this colossal empty space that remains as a testament not to the Empire’s ability to ravage, but to its inevitable ravaging? It’s a shrine now, to the inescapable ravaging all things must endure. Rey can respect that.

 

She finds what she’s looking for at the back of the hanger, near the inner wall, where never-to-be-used-again doors lead deeper into the bowels of the ship.

 

There sits a TIE bomber, damaged beyond repair. Its tri-paneled wings, built to curve around the twin barrels of its hull like rudimentary shields, are decaying, blackened and lace-like, spotted with burned-out holes.

 

One barrel is for the pilots and the artillery, the other is outfitted for passengers. Could she fill the passenger pod of this bomber, with all her tears?

 

With a great leap (and she remembers this, this leap, it was easier last time, because he was here, because he made a basket with his hands and she placed her foot in it and he hoisted her up) she manages to grab hold of the edge of a hole torn in the hull. Hissing— the sharp, serrated titanium alloy slices through her palm like hot butter— she begins to pull herself up, kicking wildly. With one great propulsive swing of her long legs, she’s up and over, and then she finds herself lying on the hard floor of the pod.

 

The interior is spartan: dull grey walls, six berths built into the hull on one side, a small galley and a few lockers for supplies on the other, and at the far end of the pod, a useless refresher, behind a hydraulic door that she knows from experience will not open.

 

She makes for a berth, clutching her injured hand to her chest. Not just any berth, either. She heads for _the_ berth. And when she lays down in it, she tips her face forward, pressing it into the pillow.

 

It’s been eight _years_. Eight draining, difficult, infuriating, melancholy years. Can she still smell him there, on the pillow? Maybe not. But maybe her mind conjures up the memory of his scent anyway.

 

Within the folds of her tunic is a hidden pocket. Carefully, she thumbs open the pocket’s fasteners, and takes out its precious contents. A postcard, creased and soft from endless foldings; on one side, a photo taken from the atmosphere of Bespin, where amidst the stiff peaks of white clouds, the wide disk of Cloud City floats. And on the other side, a drawing.

 

 _Her_ drawing, done by her own hand, in this berth. His face, as he lay sleeping beside her, right here. His dark eyelashes fanned across his pale cheek, dotted with moles. The strong beaky curve of his nose, and his full lips, slightly parted. His heavy brow, smooth and undisturbed. He was dreaming, maybe of her. Years and years of sketching the world around her had finally come in handy: she’d been able to capture him here, while he slept, on the back of a postcard she’d pilfered from his father’s ship.

 

“Ben,” she croaks, then bites her lip.

 

Even _thinking_ the name makes her lungs seize. Speaking it makes her feel like she’s drowning. Could she drown herself, in all her tears? She moans, and lets loose a shuddering dry sob, but no tears come. She does not cry.

 

She could, though. _She could_. Rey imagines she has tears enough to fill up two _Ravager_ s twice over, maybe even enough tears to bring the forests back to Jakku.

 

There's no point to it, of course. What’s done is done. But she _misses_ him, misses what could have been, what _should_ have been. And although she will not cry, Rey is not strong enough to continue refusing her memories. So she curls in on herself, and sets the drawing of his face on the pillow beside her.

 

She stares at it. At him. Well, at this ghost of him, which she stole, with a burnt nub of charcoal and his old postcard.

 

And Rey lets herself remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Thank you, if you're still with me, for hanging on through one more chapter of set-up. Next chapter we're going flashback! Some links?
> 
> What's the [Alliance](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alliance_to_Restore_the_Republic), [Coruscant Security Force](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Coruscant_Security_Force), [Imperial Navy](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy), and the [First Order](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/First_Order)?
> 
> This is [Luke and Mara's shuttle](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Luke_Skywalker%27s_shuttle), and [this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b3/68/51/b36851b95e079748f2ed366d899aebee.jpg) is an example of ion blue, which I definitely thought was a real thing when I wrote it, only to find upon googling that it is not really, except as a hair color. Shrug.
> 
> What's the [_Ravager_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ravager%22), an [_Executor_ -class Star Dreadnought](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Executor-class_Star_Dreadnought), a [TIE fighter](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/ln_space_superiority_starfighter), a [TIE interceptor](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/IN_interceptor), and a [TIE bomber](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TIE/sa_bomber)?
> 
> What's a [refresher](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Refresher), [moisture vaporator](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Moisture_vaporator/Legends), [datapad](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Datapad), [flight simulator](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Flight_simulator)?
> 
> Some edibles/potables? How about: [sunberry wine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sunberry_wine), [protato curls](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Protato_curls), [gruel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gruel), [caf](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Caf), a [ration bar](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ration_bar), or a [Sarlacc kicker](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sarlacc_kicker)?
> 
> What's a [conform lounger](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Conform_lounger)? [It's a space chair.]
> 
> What's [dejarik](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dejarik)? What do you [need to play it](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holotable), what are [holomonsters](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holomonster)? More specifically, a [K'lor'slug](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/K%27lor%27slug)?
> 
> Who's who, gffa-edition: [Corwin Ballast](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corwin_Ballast), [Mara Jade Skywalker](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mara_Jade_Skywalker)
> 
> What's an [Anchorite](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anchorite)? [R'iia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R%27iia)?
> 
> Some materials! [Steelcrete](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Steelcrete), [Ferrocrete](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ferrocrete), [Gorraslug-leather](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gorraslug-leather), [Titanium alloy](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Titanium/Legends)
> 
> [Rey's doll](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alliance_pilot_doll) and her [postcard](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:Wish_you_were_here.jpg) :'(
> 
> Jakku flora: [nightbloomer](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Nightbloomer)
> 
> Jakku fauna: [Vworkka](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vworkka), [Steelpecker](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Steelpecker)
> 
> Jakku locations: [Sko'rraq Mountains](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sko'rraq_Mountains), [Old Meru's](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Old_Meru's), [Pilgrim's Road](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Pilgrim%27s_Road), [Namenthe's Crather](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Namenthe's_Crater)
> 
> Some planets? [Tatooine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tatooine), [Vandor-3](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vandor-3), [Coruscant](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Coruscant), [Bespin](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bespin)
> 
> Okay that's all from me. Thanks for reading! ❤


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but…They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**34 ABY.**

 

The ship shows up about three weeks before they do.

 

She notices it one afternoon, after she’s exchanged the day’s findings with Unkar for a half a portion. In an attempt to stretch the afternoon out— so that when she returns to her AT-AT and eats her pittance of a supper, it will be after nightfall, and she can tumble into her hammock afterwards, burying her hunger in sleep— she takes a walk through the junkyard.

 

And there, between all the old ships— more useful as scrap than anything else— she spies it. A light freighter, if she’s not mistaken, from Corellian Engineering Corporation. She draws nearer, if only to confirm her suspicion, and yes, there on the wide sloping underbelly of its discoidal body, is written: YT-1300f. That’s one of Corellian’s codes, there’s no mistaking it. The cockpit sits separate from the body, like a growth that has bloomed on the freighter’s starboard side, and at its bow, two blocky mandibles reach forward, narrowing to squared-off points.

 

Squinting up at them, Rey wonders if they aren’t detachable. Cargo bays, maybe. Or escape pods? In any case, the freighter has clearly taken a few batterings in its life. Although the thrust vector plates appear salvageable, its duralloy hull is blackened, its viewports grimy, shield projectors all crushed or missing.

 

Rey cannot help muttering, to herself: “What a piece of junk.”

 

From off in the distance, she hears Unkar holler, “Girl! Leave that garbage alone!”

 

Yet she stares on; there’s something about it… a feeling she gets when she stands beneath it, like something inside is calling to her.

 

_“Girl!”_

 

Unkar’s voice carries a note of warning that is not to be ignored. So with a heavy sigh, Rey tears herself away from the freighter, and heads towards her speeder.

 

 

. . .

 

 

But she thinks about it, sometimes.

 

One night, she even doubles back to Niima Outpost to study it more closely. She sneaks past Unkar’s thugs, who sit sentry at the edge of the junkyard— negligent, well on their way to intoxication with whatever local rocket fuel they’ve dredged up— then dislodges one of the plates on the hull. Guided only by the moonlight and her own intuition, she digs around in the ship’s guts for a couple hours.

 

For her trouble, she receives no answers, besides this: it’s an eccentric bit of spacecraft, heavily modded, strangely resilient, and still seemingly operational despite the damage it has sustained. But otherwise? Not special, in any way that she can detect.

 

Still. Her mind wanders back to it during quiet moments of the day. She doesn’t know why.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She’s barely hanging on, by the time they track the ship back to Jakku.

 

In fact, as she drags her netful of Star Destroyer parts under the awning of Unkar’s stand, she’s mentally calculating the value of her cargo; pessimistically, she wagers she’ll be lucky if he gives her one ration portion, for what’s she got. It’s likely, if this streak of misfortune continues— a rolled ankle, and then a malfunctioning afterburner on her speeder, the combined effect of which kept her home for more days than she could afford to spare— she’ll have to go to Mashra, and beg for rations.

 

The thought is abhorrent, so Rey banishes it from her mind. Begging is a last resort, and she’s not there yet. She can’t be. This can’t go on forever, can it? They said they would come back for her, she tells herself, for the millionth time. They said they will, so they will. She _has_ to keep that hope alive.

 

Moving as if on autopilot, she sets herself to fixing up what she’s gathered at Unkar’s crude processing table. Her attention drifts across the dusty, sun-scorched scene: shifty-eyed off-worlders come and go, haggard salvagers haul in their day’s loot, and the Niima Outpost Militia patrol the market stalls. Same as always. Eventually, her eyes wander further— to the junkyard.

 

The scene has changed; she almost drops the laser actuator in her gloved hands when she notices two men standing by the Corellian light freighter, arguing… with Constable Zuvio.

 

It’s difficult to make out their faces, yet she’s certain she has never seen them before. They’re both tall, and dressed similarly, although the dark-haired younger man stands about a head above the older man, whose own hair is a shaggy silver-blonde. Their postures are different too: the younger man stands legs apart and spine straight, with one large hand resting on the blaster pistol holstered at his hip and the other clenched in a fist around his belt, while his older companion has a cat-like slouch, an innate light-footedness that is apparent even from a distance. And while the older man continues to argue heatedly with Zuvio— _a dangerous choice,_ Rey thinks, noting how the Kyuzo reaches for his electroprod— the younger man does not. He merely spectates, hand on his weapon.

 

“I should help them,” she says to no one, and since there is no disagreement, she peels off her rubber gloves, grabs her quarterstaff, and hurries towards the junkyard.

 

“You’re not getting it, pal—this is _my_ ship,” she catches the older man saying, once she’s within hearing distance. “It was stolen. Stolen! It’s not my fault, oh- _kay_? We were on Myrkr, me and my associate here—”

 

For the first time, she sees the younger man react. Calmly, he interjects: “I think you’re allowed to say ‘son.’”

 

Deep. His voice is deep and dark, like the Jakku night sky, and it rumbles the way the ground does when the happabores trample past. Rey wants to hear it again; she wants him to speak to _her_.

 

Silver hair rubs his neck, offering his son a sheepish grin before turning back to Zuvio. “We run a family business, y’see? The ship was stolen from us, by Gannis Ducain, while we were conducting… business.”

 

“Hmph,” says Zuvio, obviously unconvinced.

 

“Ben,” he grits out, “can ya—will you—will you _deal_ with this? I gotta—come on Chewie, just _look_ what they did to the damn shield projectors!”

 

An indignant, staccato roar sounds out from the shadows of the freighter. Leaning against one of its landing legs, stone-still but alert, is a massive Wookiee. As silver hair storms off toward the freighter’s ventral ramp, the Wookiee lumbers after him, ranting in Shyriiwook.

 

The younger man— Ben, he was called— steps forward, coming to a halt directly in front of the Kyuzo. He towers over the diminutive Constable, almost twice his height, but Rey suspects he would tower over taller creatures, too. Humans, even. She wonders if he’d tower over her.

 

“Zuvio,” he says, tonelessly. “How much do you want for it?”

 

“Plutt says it’s not for sale,” the tiny Constable hisses, still clutching his electroprod defensively.

 

She can see the muscles in Ben’s jaw ticking. “Take me to Plutt, then.”

 

“No!”

 

“Oi! I will!”

 

Rey doesn’t even realize her mouth has opened, and words have emitted from it— loudly— until he’s spun around, searching for the source of her voice. When she thinks back on it later, she won’t be able to remember why she volunteered, exactly. She’ll tell herself she was trying to be helpful, or that she just wanted to annoy Zuvio. But the truth is this: Rey simply wants the tall man to look her way. And _see_ her.

 

Which he does.

 

Due to her limited experience with Human men, Rey struggles to identify what’s so immediately intriguing about him, until it clicks for her— he looks completely at ease, like he knows exactly how this will all play out. But at the same time… there’s a kind of simmering fury in his expression. A hint of something else, resting just beneath the surface.

 

Proud nose, full lips, dark perceptive eyes— all set in a long, angular face. Moles dotted amongst his features. His black hair falls its way down past his ears in waves, brushing his very broad, very solid-looking shoulders. He doesn’t have the kind of lithe young man’s torso that tapers down into a narrow waist, he’s just… solid bulk. All the way down, from his chest— the definition of which is visible through the grungy white shirt and black vest he’s wearing— to his thick thighs, which are covered (but by no means concealed) by his black leather trousers.

 

Despite the grease-stained spicerunner attire, there’s something about him that is almost— regal? Aristocratic? Dignified, she decides. He has a dignified air that is utterly incongruous with his surroundings. It makes him all the more interesting.

 

Rey has seen _maybe_ a dozen or so Human men pass through Niima Outpost in her existence; scrawny, nervous outlaws mostly, and not one of them would she have deemed ‘handsome,’ so she can’t exactly claim to have a substantial basis for comparison. And yet she _knows_ he is. Or at least, he is… striking. She likes his face, almost at once. The newness of this— attraction— it’s confounding; she doesn’t understand why her fingers twitch restlessly, nor why her toes have gone a little numb, her mouth a little dry.

 

He stomps over, his expression stern, boots landing heavily on the packed sand. Nervously, she sucks in a deep breath, then adjusts her sweaty-palmed grip on her quarterstaff, and braces herself.

 

“You know where Unkar Plutt is?” he snaps, once he’s standing before her, almost toe-to-toe. Rey was right, in her supposition that he would tower over her. He’s so close, she has to tip her head back, to meet his gaze.

 

Oh, R’iia, what has she gotten herself into? She feels like someone’s unleashed a whisper of sand moths in her belly, and their wings are setting everything a-flutter. Should she run away? Should she lean up and into him, bury her nose in that stubbly juncture between his jaw and his throat?

 

No, in all her nineteen years on Jakku, Rey has never, ever met a Human man like this. An interesting one. A clean one. One she’s wanted, for… something. She doesn’t know what she wants, she just knows that— by the eternal— does she _want_.

 

Not trusting herself to speak, she merely nods.

 

And then she realizes, squinting against the sun as she raises her eyes to meet his, that he’s been studying her, too.

 

Tingling. Heat, but not external, not bearing down from Jakku’s sun or up from its sands; it’s inside her, and spreading, up to her chest, her lungs, out through her arms, down to her palms and fingers, which are sweating even more profusely.

 

He’s looking at her. At _her_. And she can’t stop looking back. One of them must do _something_ , or they will be stuck in this contest for the rest of their lives.

 

His lips twitch, just a slight quirk. Blink and you miss it, really. But Rey has the strangest sensation that Ben hasn’t just simply been looking at her. He’s _seen_ her.

 

In a much gentler voice, low, like they’re sharing secrets, he requests, “Take me to him?”

 

“Okay,” she chokes out, then spins on her heel, taking off at a forced march.

 

She doesn’t check to see if he’s following. Maybe that’s cowardly, maybe it’s callous, but in a moment of pure honesty with herself— admittedly, a rare thing— Rey can concede this: she’s not certain her pounding heart can take another moment like the one they’ve just shared.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She leaves him at Unkar’s stand with a soft ‘ _good luck,_ ’ to which he gives a grateful nod and a lingering, wistful look. Even as she walks away, she can feel him watching. Feels the weight of his eyes, making her legs sluggish and leaden. Only after she’s climbed onto her speeder, rations pack safely stowed away in her satchel, goggles on, cowl wrapped securely about her head and bust, does she feels safe enough— hidden from view like this, surely he won’t catch her— to dart a furtive glance his way.

 

And like the needle of a compass swinging due north, his eyes swing past Unkar’s blobbish, dour face, and land squarely on her. He tilts his head, curious; it’s obvious she’s been caught.

 

“Kriff!” she gasps, kicking at the ignition.

 

It takes a few times. She fumbles, suddenly clumsy— which only fuels her mortification— before the engine finally roars to life, and off she zooms.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The smell hits her first, the next time they meet. (Not his, although she’ll come to know that all too well.) Unwashed bodies, happabore scat, rotting carrion, stagnant water: she’s well acquainted with the malodorous air of Niima Outpost, well enough that she’s grown accustomed to breathing through her mouth on the days when there is no wind to whisk it away.

 

So the sweet fragrance that presents itself while she’s seated at a processing table, scrubbing up her day’s loot, comes as such an utter surprise that she almost gouges herself with the length of magnetic coil in her hands. She can’t identify it, has never smelled anything like it. Only knows that whatever it is, it’s making her mouth water.

 

Suddenly, in front of her face there appears a small round fruit, wine colored with white veins, resting in the center of a massive outstretched palm.

 

The palm is connected to a hand, also huge, and a corded forearm, and as she follows it up, there is an elbow where an off-white sleeve is rolled, stretched taut around a heavy bicep, which extends up to a solid vest-clad shoulder, and oh—

 

It’s _him_. And… he’s not smiling down at her, per se. But he doesn’t look quite so angry or serious, either. Stoic. He’s a stoic man, she thinks, looking back at the proffered fruit in his hand. Or maybe he just wishes he was.

 

“Jogan,” he mumbles, quietly enough that it feels like a confession, meant only for her ears. “You like fruit?”

 

“I’ve… never…” is all she can come up with, in response.

 

Taking that as an invitation, he seats himself beside her on the bench, jutting his chin towards her gloved hands. “Take them off, try it. It’s good.” His gaze is searching, like he’s combing her face for clues; it makes her toes curl inside her boots.

 

“Ripe,” he adds, voice dropping deeper.

 

While she peels off the gloves, he peels off the skin of the fruit, revealing the wet lavender flesh within. “My hands aren’t clean,” she tells him, cheeks going hot as she gestures to her grubby fingers, nail beds black with grime.

 

He frowns down at them, which makes her blush harder, but when he looks up, he jerks one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Doesn’t matter.”

 

She opens her mouth to protest— really, her hands _are_ filthy— and unceremoniously, he pushes a bite-sized piece past her lips. There’s a moment of frozen shock; his fingers still touching her bottom lip, her jaw hanging. Then she gathers her wits enough to shut her mouth. When she does— without meaning to— her tongue brushes across the pad of his index finger, and he sucks in a sharp breath.

 

The fruit _is_ good. Sweet, with a texture that is slightly gritty, but soft. Pleasant. Ben watches her as he drops a piece in his own mouth. Contemplatively, indulging in her desire to watch him right back, she chews and swallows.

 

After a beat, she manages, “It’s very… sweet?”

 

“I made too much food,” he says, offering her another piece. Without hesitation, she opens her mouth to receive it, and this time when she brushes her lips against his fruit-bearing fingers, it’s no accident. “On the _Falcon_.” He pauses, dark eyes riveted to her lips. “Will you help me?”

 

“Help you?” she echoes.

 

“Eat dinner with me,” he clarifies, leaning on the table, his whole body oriented towards her own.

 

“I—”

 

“I’m Ben.” He throws the jogan rind into the sand, then offers a stiff smile. But it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which remain honed in on her. It seems, to Rey, that smiling is not a frequent pastime of Ben’s. Not like Rey, who makes it a point to smile often, and widely, despite how very little she has to smile about.

 

“Rey,” she replies. “And—I don’t think—”

 

“You’re not hungry?” He eyes her sinewy arms, the collarbone protruding sharply from the neckline of her tunic.

 

“No, I—It’s just…”

 

She glances down at the netful of myriad ship parts that still need cleaning before they can be traded for food, then back at him.

 

“Ah,” he says, understanding at once her unspoken dilemma. “So. We’ll clean, then we’ll eat.”

 

“You don’t have to—”

 

“Got nothing better to do,” he cuts in, and makes another awkward attempt at a smile. “You’d be my guest.”

 

The thought of refusing his offer— both the food and the company— throws her into such a blind panic that before Rey’s pride can stop her from accepting what is obviously charity, she blurts out, “Fine!”

 

“Fine,” he agrees, reaching around her for a part from the pile. In doing so, his chest presses up against her back.

 

She’s not proud of the fact that the contact, fleeting and surely accidental, makes her whimper. He’s warm, and solid, and big, and _interesting_. She wants him to touch her again. She wants more.

 

She doesn’t get more, although he does take another moment to study her, and she thinks maybe— just maybe— he heard that whimper, because his gaze feels even more searching, more heated. But he doesn’t touch her again. Instead, silently, he sets to work on repairing the compressor in his hands.

 

Torn between elation and disappointment, swiping her tongue along her teeth to catch the last traces of the jogan’s sweet flavor, Rey does the same.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“What did you say this ship’s name was?” she inquires, as she looks around the main hold, running her hand along the faded yellow cushion of a booth that curls around an old holotable.

 

“ _Millennium Falcon_!” comes his faint reply, muffled by the passageways of ship that lay between them.

 

“The _Millenn_ …” she trails off, realizing even as she’s speaking what that must mean.

 

Following the trail of steam and clanging sound of metal on metal, she finds him in a small galley near the crew’s quarters. He’s moving a skillet across an old-fashioned cooking burner, the kind with a real flame, heating up something— colorful vegetal blooms, in shades of magenta and red and blue, and coated in a thick brown sauce. She breathes in the aroma of hot oil and cooking food, unable to remember the last time she’s smelled anything so good.

 

“Does that mean—is your father,” she pauses to look back at the passageway behind her, excitement getting the better of her, “ _this_ is the ship that made the Kessel Run in fourteen parsecs!”

 

“Twelve,” he says, not looking up.

 

“Then… your dad. Is he…”

 

Her sputtering elicits a glance, and his expression darkens, at whatever he sees on her face. “Han Solo,” he supplies.

 

“I can’t believe it.” She leans on the counter, winded by the realization. “ _The_ Han Solo? The famous smuggler?”

 

He gives a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah.”

 

“Where—is he?”

 

“Han and Chewie took a shuttle off-world, to get some parts for the _Falcon_ ,” he says, lifting the lid on a pot filled with something white and starchy. He nods at it. “Mounder potato rice.”

 

They left him behind, on Jakku. Why does the thought— that he’s been abandoned, like she was— make her throat tight, and words difficult to come by? Straining, her voice thin, she forces herself to ask:

 

“…When are they—coming back?”

 

“Hm?” He’s distracted, between the frying vegetables and the bubbling rice. “Oh. They’ll be back…I don’t know. When they’re back.”

 

Rey takes a step into the galley, then another; hands balled tightly, she has to fight the urge to grab the hem of his shirt and pull him towards her. After all, she hardly knows him. But she has so many questions: are they the same, him and her? Would he like to be alone together? Would he like to touch her?

 

She settles for: “Oh.”

 

If he’s startled at all by her proximity when he half-turns to speak, he doesn’t let on; the only trace of a reaction is a slight lift of his eyebrows. Just a twitch, really.

 

“This,” his eyes flick down to her insubstantial chest, then drag back up to her face, and when he continues, he sounds winded, “… should be hot enough now.”

 

She clears her throat. “We’ll eat in the—main hold?”

 

Skillet in one hand and pan in the other, he nods. She can feel him looming like a shadow behind her, as they make their way through the ship. Once she’s seated, he places both dishes on the table and pulls two forks from some heretofore hidden pocket inside his vest, handing one to Rey and collapsing into the booth.

 

He sits close beside her. Very close. It makes her wonder if maybe her impulse to touch him in the galley wasn’t so strange after all.

 

“Dig in,” he says.

 

So she does.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“How long have you been here?”

 

She’s inhaled about half the pot of potato rice and almost all the fried sauce-laden flower things, and a glorious fullness that borders right on the edge of painful has left her feeling sedate.

 

“All my life,” she tells him, right before she is overtaken by a yawn.

 

Ben pauses mid-chew, blinking at her. “Hm.” He shakes his head. “Seems lonely.”

 

Scrunching her nose, she shrugs, then spears a blue floret on her fork. She doesn’t look at him as she brings it to her mouth, pretending that this act takes all her concentration. But beneath the table, his knee brushes hers and when it doesn’t move away, she lowers her eyes to sneak a peek; he’s spread his legs apart, perhaps on purpose. Perhaps to catch her attention. Gently, he knocks his foot with hers.

 

And after she’s taken a deep steadying breath, she brings her eyes back up. He’s watching her. Somehow, she knew he would be.

 

“You like it?” he asks.

 

At a loss for how to respond, Rey gapes at him. For a moment that could be an instant or an eternity, they study each other. The air around them, though silent, seems to hum at a low vibration with… something. Possibility, maybe.

 

“Jakku. Do you like it here?”

 

“It’s—home.” She fidgets, twirling her fork. Then, to change the topic: “How’d you get the ship back from Plutt?”

 

“I can be very persuasive,” he bites out, scoffing at the name; he waves his fork in the food’s direction, in his own bid to redirect the conversation. “How was it?”

 

“It’s—” considering whether or not to temper her praise, she glances at him from beneath her eyelashes and finds him watching her, eager for an answer, “… the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole life, to be honest. I’ve—never had any of this. Anything green, or fresh.”

 

Would that a giant maw could open up in the booth and swallow her whole, at the look he gives her. Tender, understanding all too well what she’s saying and not saying, like he’s borne witness to the nights full of miserable, aching hunger that hide behind her words.

 

At last, he rasps, “Ah. I see.” He smooths his hands up and down the red-and-silver stripe that runs the length of both his trouser legs, then removes the blaster pistol holster, setting it on the far side of the booth. Then: “I’m—glad. That you liked the food.”

 

Again, his attention seems to wander down to her lips, then lower; she could almost laugh, realizing how oddly entranced he is by her tunic-covered chest. _They would probably disappoint you,_ she wants to tell him, but can’t quite work up the nerve.

 

“You know how to play dejarik?” he asks her breasts.

 

“No.” She shifts, bringing herself ever-so-slightly closer on their shared bench. That seems to jar him from his reverie.

 

“I could teach you,” he offers, moving the skillet and the pan to the floor and tapping a couple switches on the holotable. Tiny monstrous creatures, semi-transparent and brightly-colored, flicker to life atop the checkered squares on either side. “It’s a game of strategy.”

 

“You want to be my teacher?” She bites her lip. They are touching from hip to knee, knee to ankle; his heat bleeds through his trousers and hers, warming her leg.

 

She can see his Adam’s apple bob, as he swallows. “Yes.”

 

“Oh—okay.”

 

He inhales, bringing his chin up as he lowers his eyes to the board, almost as if he is sneering down at the holomonsters. Maybe he’s looking for something, in their fanged and furious faces. Maybe the right words.

 

He strikes an imposing figure when he does that, and again Rey wonders if it’s possible that he’s as affected by her presence as she is by his— if he’s trying to impress her, somehow.

 

“Good,” is all he says, eyes on the board, although she catches them flitting her way when he thinks she’s not looking. “Good.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Not fair!” she cries, as the last of her pieces succumbs to its gruesome death. “You cheated!”

 

“The Kintan strider death gambit is not cheating,” he says, untroubled. “I’m just better at this than you are.”

 

Rey glares at him, half-anger, half-teasing. “I only started playing two hours ago, so… that’s not fair.”

 

“You want me to go easy on you?”

 

“I—I didn’t say that,” she backtracks. He scoots closer, slinging an arm over the back of the booth behind her. Their bodies are touching; there’s so much contact: his pectoral against her shoulder, his hip and hers, their thighs. She gulps. Audibly.

 

“I can _let_ you win, if that’s what you want.” His voice is all but a purr, low and hoarse and full of promise.

 

“No,” protests Rey, “I don’t—want that.”

 

“You could come back tomorrow,” he says, with a dip of his head, so their faces are almost touching. His eyes are heavy-lidded, probing. “Play me again. That’s the only way to improve.”

 

Her breath comes quick through lips that suddenly feel chapped. Tight ragged inhalations and exhalations: in-out, in-out. She darts her tongue between her lips, wetting them, then taps the button to restart the board. He feels this too, she _knows_ he does; the way he watches her, the quick rise and fall of his broad chest— they give him away. He’s short of breath, just like she is.

 

Prodding the serpentine creature on her side of the board, she asks, “What’s this one called?”

 

“K'lor'slug.”

 

Is he moving closer? It feels like he might be, like he’s a towering wall of man that is slowly coming down around her, and Rey admits to herself— sitting tucked into his side with a full belly of fresh food and an evening’s worth of timid flirtation stirring her mind into mush— that she would not mind being crushed by him. Not one bit.

 

“I like him,” she says, taking another swipe at the thing with her pointer finger, “he’s fierce.”

 

Ben watches her, jaw ticking, for a good long while. They say nothing, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Finally, he reaches up, pulling her hand away from the K'lor'slug. A press of palms, their fingers touching, although the tips of hers only reach his outermost knuckles. Together, they stare at this point of contact.

 

“Rey—”

 

“I have to go,” she rushes to say. Because she wants this moment to last forever, but if she leaves right this very second, nothing can ever ruin it in her memory. It will always be perfect, encased in amber and untouchable.

 

“I know,” he says, lacing his fingers with hers.

 

“I wake up before sunrise,” she continues, rubbing her thumb along the knuckle of his index finger. Soft, his skin is soft here, although there are some knicks and burns. “So I can be at the Graveyard, before it gets too hot.”

 

“Hm.”

 

“And if I don’t get a full night’s sleep—”

 

“I get it, Rey.” His voice is hushed, and thick with emotion.

 

“Okay,” she sighs.

 

And it seems as though that, as they say, is that.

 

But when she’s standing beside her speeder, parked right where she left it under the _Falcon_ , and he’s in front of her, so tall and warm and peering down at her with that _look_ , like he’s waiting for her cue, she feels bold enough— under the cover of night— to whisper:

 

“You really want me to come back?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, brushing an escaped lock of hair behind her ear. “I really do.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Sleep eludes her, when she drops down into her hammock that night. Instead, her mind races. Instead, her body feels like a live wire, twitching and sparking. Instead, her fingers find their way down beneath her underwear, slipping through rough curls; her flesh there is quivering, overheated, and soaked with something slippery.

 

Without a clue as to what she’s doing, just an awareness of the need throbbing through her— she begins to rub.

 

It’s only by chance that she happens upon that tucked away little nub, only by chance that she brushes it with her thumb and sends a chill running up her spine, an inaudible groan escaping her parted lips. But now? Now she knows. Oh, how she knows. Again and again, she rubs.

 

Her eyes flutter shut. A scene has staged itself in the back of her mind, a fantasy in need of an audience: him and her, divested of their clothes. Entangled atop the holotable, moving together. Soft moans, his deep and needy, hers high and breathless.

 

Rubbing isn’t enough. It devolves into grinding with the heel of her hand, and the grinding soon becomes a kind of frantic mauling. She feels so _good_ , better than anything else in her life makes her feel, besides food and pretend-flying with her simulator and him… and there’s a sense of something looming, like the wall of a sandstorm rising up far above her head, then…

 

It comes crashing down around her, a bone-deep sigh of release running out from her core, down her legs to her toes, up to her scalp, out through her arms to her fingertips.

 

When Rey finally returns to her senses, she pulls her hand out of her pants. It’s sticky with her release, and she catches a faint whiff of it— salty-sweet. Embarrassed, she wipes her hand on the side of her pant leg until it’s dry.

 

Within minutes she is asleep, and waiting for her in dreams is a strong pair of arms, a dark pair of eyes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He joins her at Unkar’s stand the next day. Simply sets himself down next to her, plucks a negative power coupler out of her net, and gets to work dismantling it. Looking slightly more lighthearted than the day before, yes, most likely sensing her eyes on him, sure… but he stays maddeningly focused on the part, and won’t say a word no matter how long she stares.

 

Finally, she gives up. Unable to resist the smirk pulling at her own lips, she returns to the wiring on the Chatterbox sensor component before her. In contented silence— her smiling softly to herself, him not smiling exactly, but exuding a sense of good cheer nonetheless— they work.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He feeds her when they’re finished, for the second night in a row. Tonight it’s a hearty stew and fresh bread, with a crisp crust that crackles when he tears it apart and hands half to her.

 

The meal is tranquil. Shyly, they offer each other small pieces of their lives. He’s got a decade on her nineteen years, he’s been working on this light freighter with his father since he was a teenager, though he’s been a crew member, more-or-less, for even longer. She asks if he’s ever flown it, and he laughs, a soft fond sound, before affirming that yes he has, many times. He always wears the blaster pistol he modded himself in a holster on his thigh, he tells her, just like his old man taught him.

 

And in turn, she regales him with stories about the flight simulators she’s found, and about building her speeder. Does her best impression of Mashra and Plutt, and shows him the hand stitches on her leather jacket. He seems impressed, she thinks, and something about that makes her feel like she’s glowing. Like she’s made of pure light.

 

“My family left, but they’re coming back for me,” she declares, full of certainty. He gives her an odd look, but simply replies:

 

“My mother was raised a princess of Alderaan.” A sigh. He fiddles with the hem of her tunic, and she tries not to blush. “And now she’s a senator of Chandrila. My father was born no one on Corellia, became a General during the first Civil War, and returned to the—shipping business—not long after I was born.”

 

And Rey can hear the weight of unspoken history in those words, tiny resentments that have piled up, but Ben shrugs his shoulders dismissively when she asks if he misses his mother, and she decides not to push.

 

“Why did you join up with him?” she tries instead, at the same time he asks, “When did your family leave?”

 

They are both stymied, unsure who should speak. Ben presses his lips together, gesturing for her to continue, so she repeats her question.

 

“He had more time for me than she did.” He tosses his hair, as if to dispel an unwanted memory, then prompts, “And your parents?”

 

“I was five.”

 

He blows a long breath out through his nostrils at that, gripping the table so hard his knuckles go white.

 

“Rey—”

 

“It’s fine!” she chirps. Then, more assuredly: “It’s fine, really. They _are_ coming back. They told me.”

 

He looks… wounded by that, somehow. But he nods, then gathers their dirty dishes, trudging off with them towards the galley. By the time he returns Rey has the holotable activated, monsters ready in their starting positions.

 

They play four games, and there is no more discussion of parents.

 

Rey wins the fourth game.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Do you ever take a day off?” he asks, as he escorts her down the _Falcon_ ’s ventral ramp.

 

“No work, no loot—no loot, no food,” she throws over her shoulder, placing one foot on the speeder’s foothold.

 

“Rey. Wait.”

 

She turns, and he’s right there, almost on top of her. Gently, he brings his hands up to cup her cheeks. And it’s as if he is memorizing the terrain of her body with his palms, when he works his way down— tracing the line of her throat, across her bony shoulders, skimming her arms, then inward to her waist, which he can almost encircle in his hands, before sliding around and up, to the jutting wings of her shoulder blades.

 

“Rey,” he croons, tugging her away from the speeder. Into him. Her feet rest almost atop his; not even the breath of R’iia could pass between them. Touch: sensuous, warm, beautiful touch everywhere. She can feel his body against hers, feel its dimensions, feel its muscle and heft. He cranes his neck, brushing his beak of a nose against the thin skin beneath her ear.

 

“If I feed you,” he proposes, in a hoarse whisper, “will you take the day off, tomorrow?”

 

Rey can hardly think, for how good it feels to be held like this. She reaches up, testing the firm bunched muscle of his biceps— not a bit of give. Hesitantly, wondering if she’s falling too hard and too fast, she gives a small nod.

 

“Good.” He exhales, a warm puff of air against her collarbone. “Where can I find you?”

 

A thought occurs to her: she could take him to her AT-AT, right now. Let him undress her, let him do whatever it is that lovers do. Fall asleep in his arms, swaying in the hammock. She buries her face in his shirt, rubbing her cheek against his hard chest and breathing in the scent of him; oil, cooking and lubricant for the ship, a hint of smoke, and something rich, green, like how she’s always imagined a forest would smell. And something that is just him, a musky scent that has no comparison.

 

She could do it. He would go with her, she doesn’t doubt that.

 

But then what?

 

He’ll leave eventually, won’t he?

 

Rey pulls away from him, and takes a step back. “No. Sorry, no. No, I… I have to work.”

 

He sighs. Nods. Works his jaw and stares off into the night, considering. Then: “I’ll go with you.”

 

“I leave before dawn—”

 

“C’mon, Rey,” he says, another one of his strained smile-attempts. It’s better than the first one he gave her, she notices. More natural. At ease. “I’m bored out of my mind. No one’s stealing this piece of junk. Help a guy out.”

 

Nibbling on her lip, Rey deliberates. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds. “All right,” she yields. “But I’ll be here an hour before the sun is. You better be ready.”

 

“I will,” he promises.

 

And then he leans in, brushing his lips across her cheek, so quickly that she has no time to react.

 

He’s rocked back onto his heels, blinking down at her, by the time her mind can process what has just happened. There is one achingly tender moment of locked eyes, of hammering hearts, of a cheek that still burns, and a pair of lips too. She has to tear herself away, and it almost physically pains her to do so. In stunned silence, she turns and climbs up onto the seat of her speeder.

 

Does he say goodnight to her? Rey will not be able to remember, when she thinks back on it later. Just the feeling of being kissed, softly. She will suppose she must have offered a small wave, maybe a muttered _‘Goodnight then,’_ before she raced off into the night. She’ll never be certain, but that will not bother her.

 

It is her first kiss, and it is perfect. Untouchable. Encased in amber, for all time.

 

 

. . .

 

 

As soon as the gusts of early morning air hit her face, upon leaving her AT-AT, Rey feels a pang of doubt. Is it wise, to bring him along to the Graveyard? He’ll slow her down, surely. Does he own gloves, and protective garments, to shield him against the harsh Jakku afternoon? Can he climb a rope, does he know what parts are worth salvaging? Can he keep his wits about him if they meet one of the hostile salvagers that sometimes rove the _Ravager_?

 

Twice on her way to him does she stop, braking her speeder to a shuddering halt so that she can ponder whether spending more time with him— and with each passing hour, finding herself more susceptible to the heady mix of attraction and affection stirring between them— is in her best interest.

 

Should she protect her heart, from him? He’ll just leave her, won’t he? Why even let him in?

 

But she _told_ him he could come with her. Rey is a woman of her word, and what’s more— the truth she’s finding difficult to deny— she really does want to spend the day with him. So. With renewed resolution, she starts the engine, and presses on.

 

He’s waiting for her by the massive copper-plated archway that marks the entrance to Niima Outpost. At the sight of him, illuminated in the twin beams of her floodlights— thick black gloves, grey leather jacket, a dark swathe of fabric wrapped protectively around his head and shoulders— Rey forgets why she was second-guessing this choice. There’s a canvas knapsack slung over his shoulders, and he’s holding something in his hand that she can’t quite make out. He looks more than ready for a day of salvaging, and what’s more… he looks _good_.

 

Warmth pools in her chest. The arguments against their connection she’s built up during the ride— they’re drowned out by her need, her excitement. There’s nothing to fear from him, she tells herself.

 

“Mask?” she asks, coming to a halt in front of him.

 

He holds up the previously unidentifiable object, with a quirked brow; it’s a set of welding goggles.

 

Rey laughs, and whatever’s left of her apprehension is washed away. “Good enough.”

 

Night lightens into day by gradients, as they ride out along the dunes. First the world around them is obsidian, stars like glittering diamonds overhead. Then, minute by minute, everything becomes cobalt blue, durasteel grey, and finally, it is all tinged with the faintest hints of calcium orange, gold, ruby— and the clouds on the horizon, great billowing plumes, blaze every minute more wild, more fiery, like elemental life itself is being breathed into the sky.

 

Ben is an iron belt around her waist, and a molten permacrete blanket at her back, all solid heat molded against her. He tucks his chin over her shoulder, and although she must stay focused on not crashing them into the sand, she feels it when he buries nose against the cowl that covers her hair. Feels him breathe her in. It makes her shiver, and at her reaction, his arms squeeze her tighter.

 

At the bottom of the _Ravager_ ’s gaping, inoperative engine thrusters, Rey parks the speeder. The gentle breeze, the brilliant sunrise, which still glows rosy in the northern sky: these things are lulling, and in peaceful tandem they haul what supplies they’ll need up the sandy incline. The work is easier, with Ben here to help.

 

Once inside, she seeks out a massive deadened power cable she’s been using to climb the inside wall. A gloved finger pressed against her cowl-shrouded lips. Then, under her breath: “Do you know how to climb?”

 

He scoffs, volleying back in a low, scornful undertone, “I grew up fixing the _Falcon_.”

 

“Right. Good.”

 

“Why are we whispering?”

 

Rey sweeps her arm out, gesturing to the cavernous curved interior of the thruster. “Not all salvagers are as nice as me.”

 

Before she can utter the next question, whether he would like to ascend before or after her, he takes hold of the cable. He gives one hard tug; a test, she supposes. Maybe he is as slow to trust as she is. Then he clutches the cable in both fists, kicks his feet up and onto the wall, and grunting softly from the effort, begins to climb.

 

She’d thought it was a shock to be hand fed fruit by him, or to watch him cook, or to receive such a chaste first kiss; they were nothing, compared to watching him pull himself up the wall with only the cable. Idly, peering up at him, she wonders how much he weighs. Ninety kilos? A hundred? And all of it, seemingly, muscle— if he can perform a feat like this.

 

He whistles down to her, a quick high-pitched signal that startles her from her calculations; with a jolt, she realizes he’s a good fifteen meters up the cable.

 

“Not fair,” she mutters, scurrying up after him, “your legs are longer.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The inner wall of a Star Dreadnought’s Executor-50.x engine thruster is not smooth, like much of its hull. It is filled with complex wiring and highly radioactive components, which are— for the most part— safely ensconced behind titanium-reinforced alusteel compartments. What this careful design means for Rey and other salvagers like her, of course, is that it’s fairly easy to climb. Lots of footholds and handholds, where compartments begin and end, where wiring and parts are cosseted by alusteel cartridges.

 

She’s not sure she’ll ever enjoy this work, but— looking up, admiring his firm behind and thighs as he ekes his way up the wall— she acknowledges that she’s been doing it for so long that in some ways, her body feels more her own when she is climbing than when she is at rest.

 

Rey whistles up to him when they reach a height where there are parts to salvage, and he jumps off the cable, clinging to the wall while she hauls herself the rest of the way up, until she is level with him.

 

Certain components are worth more to Unkar than others: actuators, stabilizers, radiation shields, magnet coils. Spying one such component, she reaches within the groove between compartments, and rips it from its socket. She’ll have to teach him what to look for. The thought brings back the doubts from earlier in the morning; and yet, when she glances over at him— he’s creeped his way along the wall, about five meters away— she sees that he knows exactly what parts to retrieve, and that he’s already twisting to deposit one such part in his knapsack.

 

It dawns on her, at that moment, that she doesn’t really know him at all. That just as she smiles all the time despite her circumstances, perhaps his dignified bearing and his stiff solemnity belie an upbringing far humbler than the one she’s imagined for him.

 

Sighing, wishing that this work leant itself more to light chit-chat, she throws herself into her own hunt for parts.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“C’mon,” says Ben, a few hours later, after sidling up beside her on the wall. He doesn’t offer any further explanation, just jumps towards— and miraculously, latches onto— the cable, then begins rappelling back down the wall.

 

Dismayed, she hisses out, “Wait!” but he’s already gone, rapidly dropping down to the ground. Groaning to herself, teeth gritted, she follows.

 

“What’d you do that for?” she snaps, once she’s standing beside him. Her voice, a shrill yelp, echoes throughout the thruster. Wincing, she pulls off her goggles and cowl.

 

A blasé shrug, then he does the same, revealing his pale face, shining with perspiration. “My bag is full, and you must be hungry.” Without further ado, he settles himself on a pile of sand, and reaches into a side pocket of his knapsack.

 

He withdraws a jogan fruit, and a cloth-covered bundle. Bread, she realizes, as he unwraps it.

 

“We’re—going to have climb back up there. You do realize that, don’t you? This—what we have here,” she gestures to her half-full satchel of parts, and his own stuffed pack, “it’s enough for two portions. _Maybe_. If Unkar’s in a good mood.”

 

There’s no response. Instead, he levels a long, even look at her. Eventually, he pulls the gloves from his hands, peels the fruit, and tears off a piece, holding it up towards her. All of this is done without speaking, and then he gazes up at her expectantly.

 

Rey cracks. She gets the sense that he could sit there, waiting for her with the fruit in his outstretched hand, until the end of time. And in truth? Hunger is a distant point, passed hours ago— as always— without notice or mention. Perpetual emptiness is a thing she’s learned to ignore, after all… there’s no helping it. If he weren’t here, she would force her energies into other channels, denying the tight pangs in her belly like she denies every other discomfort, physical or otherwise.

 

But he _is_ here. With food, that he wants to share with her. Rey’s belly makes the choice for her; she seats herself in the sand beside him. Like a fluffy little Vworkka chick, she opens her mouth. He brings the hunk of jogan fruit to her lips, and two things happen in one instant: sweet flavor explodes across her tongue, as she pulls it into her mouth, and her stomach gurgles out an extended, growling complaint.

 

Ben arches an eyebrow, watching her chew; she casts her eyes down, unable to answer his knowing look.

 

Half a loaf of simple flatbread, the size of his hand, appears in her lap. Furiously blinking back tears, she pulls off her gloves then tears at its doughy insides. Not caring about the grime on her hands, she stuffs the bread in her mouth, one piece after another, as if she’s partaking in a frantic race with him to see who can devour their half first.

 

“Rey,” he says, soft. _Pitying_ , she thinks, unable to look at him. The tears well up, blurring her vision, then spill over, dripping down onto the bread. She doesn’t so much as glance his way. She doesn’t stop eating.

 

“Rey.”

 

If she doesn’t look at him, if she doesn’t see the pitying expression on his face, then she doesn’t have to feel pity for herself. For her hunger, for her need. She doesn’t have to acknowledge that she’s crying at his act of kindness, and at her privation. She can finish this bread— she almost has, now, just a bit of crust left, and she’s sure she can stuff that in her mouth even as she chews the previous mouthful, in fact, she does just that— and then she can go back to work, and they can never discuss this.

 

While working through the wad of half-chewed bread in her mouth, she tries to discern the hour. Rey thinks it might be about midday, the sun at its zenith in the sky, going by the light and how it skirts the outer rim of the thruster, not yet sliding its way inside.

 

He doesn’t say her name again, but she does feel a pair of powerful arms around her waist; then she is being tugged towards him, onto his lap. Eyes still deliberately fixed on the distant dunes, she feels his legs beneath her bottom, his torso at her side. She is being held, she is being cradled.

 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, rocking her.

 

“I’m fine,” she croaks.

 

“I know, Rey. I know you are.”

 

Why does that break her? She can’t say. But it does; the flow of tears grows heavier, and grudgingly, she looks up at his face.

 

Not pity. She thought she’d see pity, but she doesn’t. Just… a sort of eagerness. Like maybe he wants to fix it, fix her. Rey knows that feeling; she’s wanted to fix lots of things in her life.

 

“Thirsty?” His voice is rough, like he is choking on his own tears, although he does not cry.

 

“Yes,” she gasps.

 

Once more he reaches into his bag, and pulls out a dented durasteel canteen. “Drink,” he bids her.

 

She does, taking huge swallows of the lukewarm water, almost upending the canteen before she remembers she should leave some for him. She forces herself to stop, and hand it back to him.

 

He takes it, finishing off the rest of the water, before nuzzling her hair with a sigh.

 

“That’s enough for one day,” he says. She can’t tell if he means the upswell of emotion, or the food, or the work.

 

“But—”

 

“Back at the _Falcon_ ,” he cuts in, “I have more bread. And stew. You liked that stew, didn’t you? It’s my mother’s recipe. Her people—on Alderaan—taught her how to make it. She taught me.”

 

“I have to work,” she protests, her voice still wet, and raw.

 

He shakes his head, his lips soft against her temple. “Not today. Today you need to beat me again at dejarik.”

 

An errant sob breaks loose, jerking her chest. “And when you’re gone? Who will make Alderaan stew for me, play dejarik with me?”

 

He shifts, pulling her closer. “Well—”

 

“Forget it,” she bites out, not wanting his excuses.

 

“No. Rey—”

 

“Yes,” she hesitates, doing her own search of his eyes, his expression. He wants to speak, she can tell: his lips are parted but he’s waiting, because she’s interrupted, because he wants to hear what she has to say. “Don’t—let’s not ruin this. We can enjoy our time together, however much we have, for now.”

 

Another weary sigh tickles the short hairs at the nape of her neck, the ones that always slip out of her lowermost bun.

 

“Okay,” he allows. Under his breath, so low that she almost misses it because he rests his cheek against the crown of her head, looking back into the thruster as she stares out at the desert, he says, like an afterthought: “For now.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Can I try it out?” he asks, tipping his chin towards her speeder, after they’ve slid down the steep dune outside the thruster, on a piece of old shield plating.

 

Rey bites her lip. “I don’t know. She’s my baby.”

 

“She’s a beauty. Practical design, hardy, but—that _engine_.” His voice lilts with appreciation, and the heated look he gives her makes her wonder for one hysterical second if he’s talking about the speeder or herself. He huffs, at her reluctance. “I’ll treat her kindly. Promise.”

 

“… All right,” she sighs.

 

She’s nervous, for the first few minutes of the ride. Can’t even bring herself to wrap her arms around him, just digs her nails into her own thighs, worrying at her lip. But they hit a pocket of air, somewhere near the Kelvin Ravine, and it bounces the speeder up so high that her instinctual response is to plaster herself to his back, just to avoid getting thrown off.

 

He inhales sharply at the contact. She can feel it, feel the way his lungs expand; turning her face to lay her cheek against the broad plane of his back, she can hear his heart pounding away.

 

Is this what it means, to be taken care of? Is this what it’s like, to have a family? To belong? Is it wrapping your arms around a thick, muscular waist, closing your eyes inside your goggles, allowing your mind to wander into a fantasy of ever-after?

 

Rey is huddled against his back, breathing in the smell of him, committing it to memory. Shielded from the wind, shielded from _everything_ for the first time in as many years as she can remember, she issues a warning to herself, lest she get too comfortable—

 

 _This isn’t forever,_ she reminds her fluttering stomach, her hammering pulse, her throbbing cunt.

 

Nothing is forever, on Jakku.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And later, they climb once more. But this time it’s up a ladder, then out of a hatch, onto the top of the _Falcon_ , contented and laughing quietly about some riddle he’s told her, a Shyriiwook one that Chewie taught him.

 

The sun sets in the same tones with which it rose this morning, albeit on the other end of the world.

 

They sit side-by-side, bellies full. She steals a glance at him, but he’s watching the sunset; feeling like she’s getting away with something— salvaging a part from a ship that still has an owner— she tips her head, resting it against the firm curve of his bicep.

 

“My mother was afraid,” he confesses, with the kind of muted reverence demanded by sunrises and sunsets, “that I would be born with a sensitivity to the Force.”

 

“Oh,” she replies, unsure what else there is to say.

 

“Hm.”

 

He takes her hand in his; in an instant, she decides that if he wants to kiss her again, she’ll allow him to. She’d invite him to, if she didn’t have the feeling there’s more he wants to say. But he doesn’t speak; he rubs her hand, enveloping it between his. His gaze remains on the horizon; his profile is limned in warm, soft light.

 

Finally, she prompts, “Were you?”

 

“No. Not… no. I could feel her fear. Can feel other things, sometimes. Nothing came of it.”

 

“Ben—” she falters, embarrassed by her own ignorance. With a nod from him, she steels herself, and pushes on. “I’ve—heard the monks talk about the Force. But—I don’t—”

 

“Ah.” His eyes, flecked with gold by the setting sun, slide down to meet hers. “The Force. It’s… all around us, binding us together. I can feel you in it. Can you feel me?”

 

Is it possible to understand something completely, and not understand it all, at the same time? She closes her eyes, breathes him in, remembers how drawn she felt to his ship, how she needed him to look at her. See her.

 

“I feel you,” she tells him. “I don’t know how—but I do.”

 

“Never explored it further.” His voice is that low rumble again, the one she likes best. “Never wanted to. My father—”

 

“Is Han Solo part of the Force?”

 

He huffs, an abrupt amused exhale. “We’re all part of it. But he’s not— like _that_. And—I never wanted to be either. Not like them. So. I’m not.”

 

“Okay,” she murmurs, even as her mind races with a thousand more questions. There are so many; she feels besieged, unsure where to even begin.

 

“My mother is leading the war, against the First Order,” he says. “Has been, since before I was born. Most of my life, she and my uncle have been leading that war.”

 

“I understand.” She doesn’t, but it seems like the right thing to say.

 

“Han Solo— _he’s_ the one who needed me.” The finality in his tone suggests that he’s just explained something very important to her.

 

She nods, eyes still closed, and gives a sleepy little hum of agreement. It’s been a long day. Good— there’s been food, and him, and dejarik and lingering looks and soft touches— but long. Longer, in some ways, than her usual day of salvaging.

 

“What do _you_ need, Rey?”

 

The words are just a whisper, barely louder than the breeze. They’re followed by a soft tugging on her scalp, then the tickle of her hair around her shoulders; he’s taken it out of her buns. Running his long fingers through the tresses, he sighs, waiting.

 

And Rey cannot think of a single answer to the question that will not betray the depth and scope of her longing. So she lifts her shoulders indifferently, a quick twitch, and does not open her eyes.

 

He doesn’t push. Just continues gently combing his fingers through her hair. And eventually, she falls asleep— his chest her pillow, his heartbeat her lullaby.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Panic. Crippling, sweat-drenched panic. One minute there is a dark deep well, and she sleeps soundly at the bottom of it. The next, she’s awake. It’s still dark, but nothing is sound anymore—

 

She’s not in her AT-AT. Not in her hammock. Doesn’t recognize the padded overhang of the small berth in which she lies, tucked under several thick blankets. It’s comfortable but… it’s not home.

 

Jackknifing into a seated position leaves her dizzy, and she sucks in quick shallow breaths, trying to rein in the spiraling panic. But…

 

 _They_ could be on Jakku, right now. They could be looking for her, and she’s not there. They could have already left again, having come back to find her absent.

 

What if it’s all over? What if it all happened while she was sleeping in a strange bed, on a strange ship, beside a man she only met two days ago. It’s all over, before it even began, and she’s been left behind. Again. Again and again and again and—

 

“Rey?” A deep baritone, spiked with concern. “You okay?”

 

“Where am I?” Her voice is wavering and thin, much higher pitched than normal. Shrill.

 

“You’re safe, you’re with me.” A flicker of movement in the dark, then the glowpanel overhead turns on, bathing the small viewport-less compartment in light. He crouches beside the berth. “We’re in the crew’s quarters, on the _Falcon_.”

 

For a few seconds, she focuses on breathing— in-out, in-out— and stares at his worried face.

 

“I never—never sleep anywhere but my home,” she groans, “What if they came back tonight?” She’s up, brushing past him. Still in her clothes, although the metal deck is cold against her bare feet. “And they’re looking for me?” Stumbling through the doorway into the passageway, she lists in one direction and then the other, disoriented. “And I’m not there?”

 

Two hands, warm and steady on her shoulders, gingerly spin her around. He peers down at her, brow furrowed.

 

“It’s just one night,” he reasons.

 

“But—but—”

 

“No.” He purses his lips, giving a tiny shake of his head. “You’re right.” He relinquishes his hold on her, then backs away. “Of course. Go, if you need to. I’m—I thought you needed sleep, or I would have woken you. You were… tired.”

 

“I can’t remember ever sleeping anywhere that wasn’t my own bed,” she tries to explain. Now that he’s not touching her, now that he’s retreated into stoic acceptance, eyes shuttered, she feels bereft all over again in a different, sharper way.

 

“You were safe, here. With me,” he says, softly, although his face gives her nothing.

 

“I always—sleep alone. I’m always alone, Ben. Always.” And she always will be, if they’ve come back and she's missed them. She reaches for his hand, needing that solace, and is relieved when he gives it, then pulls her into a hug.

 

“You’re not alone,” he tells her. “Please—stay.” At the feeling of him brushing stray hairs away from her forehead, she lifts her eyes, searching for some sign of his thoughts. He doesn’t smile, not really, but his eyebrows raise, the way they might if he _were_ smiling.

 

 _Eager_ , she thinks, remembering his expression from earlier. Eager for company, for _her_ company. Eager for her. She feels seen, and she feels wanted.

 

“You’re not alone, Rey,” he repeats.

 

A weary nod is the best she can muster, although the words make her heart pound double-time. “Neither are you,” she whispers.

 

When they amble back to the crew’s quarters, he makes for his berth, situated in the bulkhead cornerwise from her own. But she doesn’t release his hand, doesn’t want him so far away. No, she holds onto him tightly. And upon realizing that, he whirls around to face her, eyes wide.

 

Rey says nothing, as she draws him towards her own berth. Even once they are settled— his big furnace of a body curled around her back, one heavy arm pinned against her belly, so close she can feel him ( _all_ of him) against her— she still says nothing.

 

His breath tickles her neck, his legs twine with hers, his thigh hard against her sex. And yet, there isn’t any urgency to this embrace. Their breaths fall into the same steady rhythm, perfectly synchronized. Even, and slow. In. She’s not alone, after all. Out. It’s better than any of the endless promises she’s made to herself about the future— that someday she would _not_ be alone, that they would return for her— because there’s no uncertainty to it. He is here, now.

 

In. _You’re not alone._ Out.

 

There are no words better than those; they’re all she needs to lull her back to sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**42 ABY.**

It’s late when Rey finally returns home to Ergel’s Bar, making her way on tiptoe through the darkened cantina, up the slatternly stairs, and down the hall towards her bedroom.

 

She should sleep.

 

And it is precisely because she _should_ — she’s stressed, defeated, confused, and so full of sorrow she feels like it’s about to start leaking out her ears at any moment— that she knows she _won’t_. Can’t. Soundlessly, she slips past the bedrooms, to the kitchen. She’s in luck; Verla has left her datapad on the table, and it’s still got a pretty decent charge.

 

It’s a mistake, what she’s about to do. Locking away that part of her life, willing herself to pretend she’s forgotten him: these were good ideas. Looking him up on the HoloNet: this is a bad idea. Stacked up against all the other mistakes she has made in her twenty-seven years of life, however, it seems… inconsequential.

 

Her heart is already broken. What are a few more cracks?

 

She types his name into the HoloNet News' database, and is inundated with hits. A few, scattered throughout the years, stick out to her:

 

 **_Son of Chandrilan Senator Makes Name for Himself after Helping Take Out Super Star Destroyer_ ** **Eclipse** **_During Naval Assault_ **

 

 

**_New Republic Defense Fleet Ensign Benjamin Solo Provides Crucial Assistance in Successful Defense of Outer Rim Planet Ryloth_ **

 

 

**_Plans for New Superweapon, Starkiller Base, Intercepted and Exposed by Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Solo_ **

 

 

**_Senator Leia Solo-Organa Awards Son, Commander Benjamin Solo, with Medal of Honor for Heroic Actions in the Battle of Atterra Bravo_ **

 

 

**_Says Captain Benjamin Solo of the Decisive Final Battle that Won the New Republic’s War against the First Order: “We are ready to reclaim peace.”_ **

 

 

Rey cannot bring herself to click on a single article; it’s enough to scan the headlines, and let her imagination run wild through the accolades that must follow. Does she blame Mashra, at that moment? Does she resent her?

 

No. It would be easy to, but she doesn’t. Ultimately, there is only one set of shoulders upon whom the onus of her decisions must rest. And they shudder now, as she carefully slides the datapad away from herself, then lowers her head into the shelter of her folded arms.

 

A hero. He’s a kriffing hero, and she’s even more of a nobody than she was when he left her.

 

Rey has never felt so alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo, we have a meet-cute! Some links?
> 
> Who's who, gffa edition: [Gannis Ducain](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gannis_Ducain)
> 
> Who are the [Wookiee](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Wookiee) and what [language](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Shyriiwook) do they speak?
> 
> Where is [Alderaan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alderaan), [Corellia](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellia/Legends), [Myrkr](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Myrkr), [Ryloth](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ryloth), [Starkiller Base](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Starkiller_Base), [Atterra Bravo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Atterra_Bravo)?
> 
> On Jakku, where/what is the [Kelvin Ravine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kelvin_Ravine)?
> 
> What's the [New Republic Defense Fleet](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/New_Republic_Defense_Fleet)? [the navy, essentially]
> 
> What's a [happabore](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Happabore)? [This seems like a good time to mention that if you ever read a canonverse fic I've written about Rey in which a happabore is not at least mentioned, please send help because something has gone terribly wrong. They are my _favorite_.]
> 
> What's the [_Millennium Falcon_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Millennium_Falcon)? ;) [Here](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/3/32/Millennium_Falcon_blueprints.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160902110303) and [here](https://img.purch.com/h/1000/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3Ni81ODEvb3JpZ2luYWwvbWlsbGVuaXVtZmFsY29uLmpwZw==) are some helpful diagrams of the _Falcon_.
> 
> What's the [Corellian Engineering Corporation](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_Engineering_Corporation)?
> 
> What's the [_Eclipse_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Eclipse_\(Executor-class\))?
> 
> What's the [HoloNet News](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/HoloNet_News/Legends)?
> 
> What's [alusteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alusteel)?
> 
> What's a [shield projector](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Deflector_shield_generator/Legends)? There's not much about the [_Ravager_ 's engine](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Executor-50.x_engine), so that is pretty much all me just making shizz up!
> 
> What is [mounder potato rice](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Mounder_potato_rice) and why does Han hate it? [jogan fruit](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jogan_fruit)? [[my inspiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar-apple) for the jogan—one of my all-time favorite fruits, the sugar-apple/sweetsop]
> 
> What's a [glowpanel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Glowpanel) and a [holotable](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holotable)?
> 
> Okay, I confess: I'm a hack who just borrowed Ben's winning dejarik move— the [Kintan strider death gambit](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kintan_strider_death_gambit)— from wookieepedia! XD
> 
> Those are all my notes for this chapter. I hope the heartbreak isn't too much and that you're still on-board for the ride? I promise, just as in _Persuasion_ , we will have our happy ending! If you liked what you've read so far, maybe leave me some feedback? I love that kind of thing, and I welcome your thoughts! 
> 
> Okay, that's it for me. [I think, but please feel free to let me know if I forgot something!] 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading! ❤


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Excepting one short period of her life, she had never… known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**42 ABY.**

 

“You wouldn’t deny your baby sister her final request, would you?” whines Gozetta, plaintive.

 

The profile of her face is a flickering cyan cloud over Rey’s holoprojector. It’s clear from the tilted angle of her head and the throw pillow beneath it that she’s lying in repose in her home, probably on a couch or in bed. Rey wonders what is supporting the holorecorder. An end table, maybe. Gozetta and Poe must have a nice home, or at least, she’s always imagined so.

 

“Make no mistake,” she continues, with a woeful little sniffle, “I _am_ languishing. Not that anyone cares.”

 

Gozetta turns onto her side, looking into the holorecorder lens and thus, directly at Rey. Knowing her sister is scrutinizing her face for signs of incredulity, she does her best to keep her expression neutral. And not roll her eyes.

 

It’s a struggle. It always is, when Gozetta falls into one of her glum moods and insists that the cosmos are conspiring against her. Rey hardly ever hears from her sister outside of these moods, which usually culminate in Rey sitting with Gozetta’s hologram for hours, reassuring her that she is loved and appreciated. Oddly enough, neither their elder sister nor their father ever seem to be available for this duty; it’s almost as though they have shared precognition of these times and plan ahead to make themselves scarce.

 

Rey shakes her head; surely that’s just the exhaustion turning her thoughts uncharitable.

 

“I’m sure it’s not _that_ bad, Goz,” she says, offering her younger sister a tight smile.

 

“Isn’t it? Here I am— _mortally ill_ , as I said—and where are my children, Rey? Where is my husband? Where are my mother and father-in-law, hmm? And my sister-in-law? Out enjoying themselves, of course.”

 

Rey sighs.

 

“You don’t know! You’re not here, you don’t see how they treat me.” Another sniffle. Gozetta’s hand comes into view, holding a handkerchief. Gingerly, she dabs at her visibly dry eyes. “So… you’ll come, won’t you? Just for a month or so. You might as well, it’s not like you’re needed in Bastatha! And—I am a stranger in a strange land, here. Alone and unloved. No one has _ever_ come to visit me.”

 

Rey just barely manages to not snort at that, but it’s a close call. As if Gozetta has the first clue what it’s like to feel alone and unloved. She wasn’t left behind on Jakku, was she?

 

No. _No_. That wasn’t Goz’s fault; she was a newborn when all that happened. It’s not fair to hold a grudge against her for Ergel’s decisions. And Rey resolved long ago not to cast blame on Ergel, either.

 

 _What’s past is past,_ she reminds herself, not for the first time.

 

Instead, she focuses on Gozetta’s request. Her younger sister can be a bit much at times, sure, but at least she _wants_ Rey around, to some extent. That’s more than Rey can say with any certainty about Ergel or Verla. Moreover, Rey has never met her nephews, nor her sister’s relations, other than Poe. It would be nice to finally see them all in person… even Poe. Nice— a little awkward, maybe— but nice all the same.

 

And of course, there’s _Chandrila_. How many times has she sat in this living room while Gozetta complained of Chandrila, bawling over tales of picnics and parades and balls? It’s a lush living planet, with oceans and forests and cities bursting with people. Who live _above_ ground.

 

If she went, she could smell rain for the first time in her life. She could see trees. She could learn to swim. She could dance, maybe.

 

(He taught her how to dance, one night. They’d had to keep quiet— bare feet padding on the hard grated deck of the _Falcon_ ’s crew quarters— because Han and Chewbacca were sleeping, just down the passageway. He’d spun her, then dipped her back before kissing her soundly. And she’d felt safe, letting herself hang suspended in his arms like that. So safe.)

 

Rey heaves another deep sigh. As much as she’d like to accept Gozetta’s invitation, she really shouldn’t. How will Verla and Ergel even survive, without her? And what about Corwin, who has somehow insinuated himself into the moving plans? Rey doesn’t like the insincere way Corwin talks about the Skywalkers and the Damerons, doesn’t like the way he’s always hinting that he’s some important person on Bastatha. Doesn’t like the flirtatious winks he keeps giving Verla, doesn’t like the advice he’s been giving her father, and certainly doesn’t like how avidly Ergel’s been listening to it.

 

Who will keep their eyes on Corwin, if she goes to Chandrila?

 

She does a quick scan of the apartment’s living room. No one’s around, of course. The place is almost completely bare; in the past week, most of the family’s furniture and belongings have been sold off. Whatever was left has been boxed up in packing crates, ready to be lashed onto Rey’s speeder and taken to Niima Outpost in two days’ time, when their chartered light freighter— passage paid by Mashra, as if their circumstances weren’t humiliating enough— will be taking them to Bastatha.

 

Bastatha. A shudder passes through Rey— also not for the first time— at the thought of descending down through the planet’s toxic gases and barren surface to the dark hot tunnels underneath. She shies away from the thought. _Don’t dwell on the past,_ she chides herself, _and try not to linger on the future, either._

 

“I don’t know if your in-laws count as strangers, Goz,” she demurs, a belated response. “I’m sure they’re very concerned for your health. As are your children, no doubt.”

 

Gozetta gasps, then feigns another melodramatic sob. “Not bloody _likely_! Rey. Please.” Rey wavers, worrying at her lip. Casting a shrewd eye over her, Gozetta must be able to see that she’s about to crack, because she delivers the clincher with ease: “I _want_ my big sister here. I miss _my_ family.”

 

“Oh!” cries Rey, faintly. Gozetta has dealt her Ace card; if there’s one thing Rey cannot resist, it’s feeling wanted. Especially by her family members, who so rarely have any use for her. “Well—”

 

“Please!” Gozetta pouts, pushing her lower lip out. “Please, Rey. I’ll even tell Ver and Pa for you! All you have to do is get yourself here! Pleeeea—”

 

“All _right_ ,” she yields. “Just—stop making that face. You look like a happabore.”

 

Her sister’s melancholy seems to dissipate at once; she grins, her cheeks dimpling in the same way Rey’s always do. “So you’ll come?”

 

“Yes, yes. I’ll—figure something out. In a few days, after I see Pa and Verla off.”

 

Rey struggles to appear aloof for a moment longer, then gives in, returning Gozetta’s smile. Maybe she should feel bad about forsaking her elder sister and her father, leaving them to establish themselves in Bastatha without her help. Maybe she should be overrun with concerns about Corwin and why he’s hanging around, what he’s up to.

 

And she’s sure she will be, later. But in this moment, she doesn’t and she isn’t. A wild flicker of elation moves within her chest, setting her fingers trembling and her pulse racing.

 

A new planet. A green planet. Somewhere that isn’t Jakku, with its sand and its bones and its ghosts. She bites her lip; she can hardly wait.

 

(And of course, there’s a tiny sliver of possibility that she might see _him_ there. Who knows where he’ll go, now that the war is over? He might go anywhere; he might join his mother, who still serves in the Senate. But Chandrila is his homeworld, so his returning is not an _im_ possibility, and if that thought causes her stomach to swoop like a Vworkka riding the thermals high in the sky, well… that’s her own private affair, and no one else need know about it.)

 

 

. . .

 

 

Corwin’s sitting at the bar when she clatters down the stairs, in search of Verla. He’s well on his way to being completely blitzed; draped over the counter, his head is propped up by one hand. In front of him sits a full glass and a half-empty bottle of knockback nectar.

 

“You’re still here,” she observes, blandly. Rey glances around, but her father and Verla are nowhere to be seen. The bar is dim— none of the overhead sonic lamps are on— and only the light filtering in through the partially boarded windows illuminates the place; the old chronometer on the wall reads just after two o’clock.

 

“Where else would I be, sweetheart?”

 

Her mouth snaps shut so abruptly that her teeth clack together; she fights to restrain the harsh retort that bubbles up. Blinking back memories, she stares across the bar at nothing.

 

(Sweetheart, he’d called her, in a low deep rumble, and she’d felt like she could be. Her heart could be sweet for him, _she_ could be sweet for him.)

 

A knowing smirk. “Na-a-ah,” he says, drawing the word out, his nasal voice a punishment to her ears. “You’re not _anyone’s_ sweetheart, are you?”

 

She glowers at him, and stands her ground. “What about it?”

 

“Just sayin’,” he slurs, sipping at his drink, “You’re not gettin’ any younger. Maybe you should—” he waves his hand around, nectar sloshing over the sides of the glass, “—put a little more effort into it. Like your sister does. You could be pretty like her… if you tried.”

 

It’s about ten steps to the front door. Then five to her parked speeder, where her rarely-used quarterstaff is lodged securely in its net. A second to pull it free, another five steps back into the bar, and she could bring him to his knees in less than a minute— especially in his intoxicated state. She could make him bleed, make him cry. Make him beg for her forgiveness.

 

But to what end?

 

The sudden flare of her temper extinguishes, upon consideration of how useless anything she might do to Corwin would be: it would only endear him to her father and sister, only cause them to sympathize with him, and further their animosity towards her.

 

“I’m—very content,” she manages, through gritted teeth.

 

“Sure y’are.” He hiccups loudly.

 

This man is no plotting mastermind, is he? Surely, he can’t be. Rey realizes, as she studies him, that he’s gaunt in a way she used to be— desert-starved. His hair has been bleached by the sun, his skin leathery, his stubble flecked with grey. There’s grey in his eyes too, and they stare back at her with a passive kind of interest. _Who are you?_ she wonders.

 

“Where is my father?”

 

He shrugs and waves his hand, spilling more liquor onto the floor. “Settling things with Plutt.”

 

Good enough. “Why are you _really_ going with us to Bastatha?” she asks.

 

“I can be of service,” he says, speaking slowly, enunciating with care and punctuating the thought with a hearty swallow from his glass. “I have connections.” Another gulp. “You’re gonna need someone like me around—t’introduce you to the _right_ people.”

 

Rey draws nearer to the bar, still keeping her distance from Corwin. “But why do you want to help _us_?”

 

“Can’t a person just be helpful?” His eyelids have begun to droop and he drops his cheek back into his palm.

 

“… Sure,” she replies. “Maybe.” Another step closer and now she can smell the pungent odor of his drink; Corwin watches her, slit-eyed. “But are _you_ a helpful person, Corwin?”

 

His eyes snap open and he glares at her, a frown pulling at his thin chapped lips. Rey glares right back. What follows is a long fraught moment, a staredown, wherein neither moves, not even to blink. Finally, with a growl and a sneer, Corwin breaks eye contact, sending his gaze down into the dregs of his nectar. He shrugs again, a churlish dismissal.

 

“‘Course I am.”

 

Rey smiles at him, grim and determined. If nothing else, she’s at least let him know that she won’t be as easily duped as her family. That she’s onto him. “Have you seen Verla?”

 

“No,” he sniffs, not looking at her.

 

It’s as much an end to a conversation as any ‘no’ ever was, so Rey turns on her heel, and marches back up the stairs.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After she’s forestalled seeking out Verla with far too many cups of caf and a redundant burst of cleaning in the apartment, Rey locates her sister out behind the building, on her knees, bent over and collecting mushrooms from under the moisture vaporator.

 

And if that isn’t a sign of the times changing— Verla, _working_ , she nearly trips over her own feet at the sight— then Rey doesn’t know what is.

 

“Ver,” she says, quietly, as she approaches. Cautiously.

 

“Goz already told me, on commcall.” Verla’s voice is bone-dry. She doesn’t push herself up from the ground or even bother to look in Rey’s direction. “Have fun on Chandrila, I guess. I’m sure the Damerons will be a grand time.” She snorts, as though she’s just told a joke.

 

“… Oh.” Rey hadn’t really believed Gozetta when she had promised she’d tell Verla, but it’s a nice surprise, knowing her sister broke the news for her. “Uh, all right then.”

 

“Anything else?”

 

Verla’s gloved hand swings out from the little mushroom patch and deposits a fistful of white caps into a plastic container that rests in the sand beside her.

 

Rey can think of a few more things. She thinks about saying: _Why don’t you like me? Why aren’t we close? You’re my big sister, don’t you feel anything sisterly or nurturing towards me?_

 

Or maybe: _Why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you make Ergel take me with you when you left, or make him come back for me? Didn’t you miss me?_

 

Or: _Did you forget about me?_

 

Or: _Did you ever love me? Did any of you even care, besides Ma?_

 

But she can’t imagine she’ll get any answers she’ll like, from those questions— or at least, not any easy ones— and Rey is too tired, despite all the caf, for difficult questions and difficult answers. So she doesn’t ask.

 

What she says, instead, is: “I’m worried about Corwin.”

 

No response from Verla, but she’s already put it out there, so she decides to press on. “I think—I don’t know. I think he’s angling for something. I don’t like the way he talks about the Skywalkers, or about all his _important_ friends on Bastatha.”

 

“And what exactly do you think he’s angling for, hm?”

 

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe he wants to use Pa, somehow? Don’t you think it’s odd, how he’s stuck around? And now he’s coming with us? That doesn’t strike you as—”

 

Verla surges upwards, moving out from under the vaporator as she hisses, “Corwin has been nothing but a supportive friend in this difficult time, Rey. To Pa and me, both. A lot more supportive than _you_ , as a matter of fact. All you ever talk about is logistics this, money that. Half the time you’re off doing brix knows what—”

 

“Fixing _this!_ ” she snaps, unable to resist the bait. “I’m trying to _fix_ this mess we’re in!” She bites her lip, and turns away. Takes a few calming breaths until the anger and hurt subsides. Then, in a dull voice, she asks, “What do you want me to talk about? We’re broke, we’re getting run off the planet. All we’ll have by the time we reach Bastatha is what Mashra has lent us.”

 

Frowning, Verla looks away, off across the desert towards Namenthe’s Crater. The sun sits low in the sky to the south; it’ll set in a couple hours.

 

“And,” continues Rey, “we’ve never been—close, have we?”

 

Verla ignores that afterthought. “We have things; we’re not _broke_. We have our connections. We have our good name—”

 

She can’t help but laugh at that, perhaps a bit hysterically. “What name? Ergel’s? No one knows or cares who Ergel is, Ver!”

 

For that bit of unwelcome truth, she receives one Verla’s icy sneers; then her sister continues as though she hasn’t heard. “And we have our pride. Well—” she pauses, looking Rey up and down, “ _—some_ of us do.”

 

“Pride?” she echoes, disbelieving. That one wounds her, there’s no pretending it doesn’t. Verla gives a curt nod, then returns to a prostrate position and shoves her arm back into the mushroom patch.

 

Under her breath and through pressed lips, Rey retorts, “Like _that’s_ ever done any of us any good.”

 

“What was that?”

 

“Just—keep an eye on Corwin, will you?” Rey shifts her weight from one foot to the other, then circles the vaporator, trying to catch Verla’s gaze. “There’s something—I don’t know. I don’t _trust_ him, Ver.”

 

Verla twists her head to glare up at Rey. “There’s nothing to watch. You’re just bad at trusting people.”

 

There’s a limit to how much unkindness Rey can take, even from her own sister— and Rey has just reached that limit. She turns to leave, muttering as she stomps off, “Bad at trusting people? Wonder why _that_ could be.”

 

And if Verla hears her, she doesn’t deign to reply.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Well,” Mashra sighs, when Rey informs her the next day about the change of plans, “I don’t like seeing the family separated, to be honest. But I suppose we’ll be able to visit each other in Hanna City, at least. So that’s something.”

 

“Who are you staying with, again?” she asks, shifting in the seat of her speeder.

 

They look on from the outskirts of Niima Outpost as the few weary salvagers left on Jakku haul in their day’s work; Rey grimaces in sympathy, remembering when she was one of them. Her family’s return may not have provided quite the outcome she was hoping for, but it has at least spared her this particular brand of grueling daily labor.

 

“A cousin, from my mother’s side.” The Abednedo leans against the speeder’s front, one arm casually resting on its hood. “Returning General, believe it or not! He was wounded in the Battle of Crait; they couldn’t get him to a bacta tank quickly enough to save his arm. I think he’ll be very glad for the company, while he adjusts to using the prosthetic.”

 

“Ah,” is all Rey says.

 

She takes a deep breath, inhaling the stale smell of desert and the outpost— so familiar, not quite comforting, but still the same air she’s been breathing all her life. Tomorrow, though… she’ll breathe new air. First, that of the freighter she’s chartered, with loaned credits from Mashra. Then, eventually, that of Chandrila. Absently, she wonders if she’ll forget the smell of Jakku, after she’s been gone for a while. She’s never thought to ask her family about that.

 

At Mashra’s feet are two large plasteel footlockers and a cloth knapsack; her own ride, a chak-root smuggler passing through the Core on their way back from Erysthes, should be here within the hour.

 

Nothing is forever on Jakku. Not Mashra living here, not her family’s supposed happy-ever-after. Not the forests or the water, not the Starship Graveyard. Not the Imperial Remnant, not the Hutts, not even Unkar Plutt.

 

Nothing. (Not even him and her. Or, rather: especially not him and her.)

 

“I can’t believe we’re really leaving, Mashra,” she reflects, “I can’t believe this is _how_ we’re leaving. It just seems so—”

 

“Tragic?”

 

Rey huffs in sardonic amusement. “I was going to say pitiful.”

 

“It _is_ a pity,” Mashra agrees, misinterpreting Rey’s use of the word. “To see your family torn apart, driven from your home—”

 

She bites her tongue, to keep a sharp rejoinder from spilling out.

 

Mashra continues, “It breaks my heart. Really. This separation saddens me deeply, Rey.”

 

 _And what of my broken heart?_ Rey yearns to reply. _What of the separations I endured? Where was_ your _heart then?_

 

Going back to the _Ravager_ was a mistake. Just as its name denotes, it has reopened all her old wounds, left them weeping and raw. She’s been on edge this past week, harsh words for everyone just on the tip of her tongue. More than once, she’s almost slipped and let out some resentful barb or pointed question, as she did with Corwin.

 

 _What’s past is past. What’s past is past. What’s past is past._ She says it to herself until she feels the anger wane once more, replaced with the resigned acceptance that has come to shape her life.

 

And besides, isn’t Mashra the one who looked after her, who kept her fed when she would have starved, who kept her hope for her family’s return alive when it was on the verge of being smothered? Mashra loves her, she knows that. Her counsel was necessary; she’s said it before and she’s right— Rey was so young, then.

 

“When you get to Bastatha—keep an eye on Corwin,” Mashra advises, apropos of nothing.

 

“You’ve noticed it too?”

 

She feels vindicated by Mashra's nod; she’s not imagining things in regard to his suspicious demeanor, in any case. They lapse into a pensive lull for a moment, before Mashra begins again in a new direction.

 

“The Skywalkers were very… cagey with me, when they signed the deed last week,” she says, “Did they give you any idea of what they plan to do with the building or the land?”

 

Rey shrugs. “Jedi school or something. Beyond that, I have no idea, but—I can’t see how it matters.”

 

“You might buy it back from them one day!” Mashra looks vexed; she blinks her piscine eyes rapidly, and brings her large hand up to rub at her long snout. “We might reclaim Jakku as our home, in time.”

 

“I think—” she bites her lip, considering how to best voice her sentiments, “—maybe it’s better if we don’t.”

 

Mashra sighs tiredly and looks off toward the outpost, perhaps committing it to memory, perhaps accepting this is the final time she will see it.

 

“Maybe it’s for the best, leaving Jakku,” Rey concludes, proud of how firm her voice sounds.

 

Silently, to herself, she adds: _Maybe I should have already left, a long time ago._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**34 ABY.**

 

She wakes to semi-darkness— just one glowpanel bathes the _Falcon_ ’s crew quarters with fuzzy light— but it’s not as frightening as it was before. His arm is wrapped around her tightly, a few quilted blankets covering them both, and her senses are flooded with Ben: his warmth, his sturdy thighs pressed flush against the back of hers, his breaths puffing onto her shoulder. His hand— holding hers to her breast, their fingers entwined.

 

Rey smiles, a lazy tender thing. She could get used to this, waking in his arms; she can’t remember ever feeling so safe.

 

From somewhere on the ship, a ‘whoosh’ sound, followed by metal sliding against metal, disturbs the tranquil moment and heralds the lowering of the ventral ramp. Then the footfall of booted feet on the durasteel deck rings out. She goes completely still, ears straining to pick up what’s happening; panic makes her heart race, and she cringes when she remembers that she’s left her quarterstaff far away, in the main hold.

 

A gruff voice bounces around the bulkheads of the passageway; it’s a running commentary, peppered with a Wookiee’s yowling responses.

 

“So I said, ‘I never _made_ a deal with Kanjiklub,’ and he had the _nerve_ to say he didn’t trust my word! Me! You believe that?” The voice makes a disapproving click with its tongue. “You know what I told him?”

 

The Wookiee offers up a retort in Shyriiwook. Rey’s not very adept in the language, but she thinks it might be a sarcastic _‘not my fault.'_

 

“ _No_ , wise guy, that’s not—”

 

The footfalls halt abruptly, as does their conversation. Rey— on the inside of the bunk, pressed up against the hull by Ben’s hulking body— keeps her eyes squeezed shut and doesn’t so much as breathe. Her heart is pounding so loudly now that she’s sure they can hear it, and she can feel two sets of eyes drilling into her and Ben’s backs.

 

With a soft huff, Ben noses at her neck, then gives her hand a squeeze. So. He’s awake as well. Still she stays frozen, petrified, waiting to see what the intruders will do. What Ben will do.

 

“Well well,” says the voice, sounding amused, “what have we here, Chewie?”

 

A response in Shyriiwook, which Rey can’t make out over the hammering of blood in her ears.

 

The voice snorts. “I gotta say—I think you’re right.” A few claps ring out. “Hey!” Clap. “Ben!” Clap. “Wake up, kid!”

 

Ben sighs, noisily. She feels him prop himself up on an elbow, twisting to look at whoever is speaking.

 

“Not a kid, Han.” His resigned tone leads Rey to suspect they’ve had this exchange many times before.

 

“‘Spose not,” Han replies, with a barking laugh. “You finally found a girlfriend, huh? Who would’ve thought it’d be on this rock?”

 

Rey’s cheeks are immediately aflame. Her toes curl with pleasure at the word ‘girlfriend.’ Although she’s tempted to continue feigning sleep— just to hear what else they might say about her— her curiosity about the famous smuggler Han Solo wins out, so she stretches, rolls over, and sits up.

 

“ _Han—_ ”

 

“Hullo,” she interrupts, “I’m Rey.”

 

It’s him, the old man who was with Ben on the first day she saw him. And behind him, the same Wookiee— Chewbacca. Han wears a roguish, knowing smirk; he jerks his elbow back into Chewbacca’s gut and chuckles.

 

“Nice to meet you, Rey.” He grins at her. “You havin’ a nice time on our ship?”

 

“Cut it out, Han,” says Ben, tersely.

 

Han sends a pointed look Rey’s way. “My own kid calls me Han, isn’t that somethin’? _I_ didn’t teach him that—that’s all his mother.” He studies her for a moment, before his gaze passes around the cabin. Finally, it returns to her face. “You two look very cozy in here.”

 

“Er,” is about all Rey can come up with.

 

“ _Han_.” Sharper this time, spiked with warning.

 

Ben’s hand swings back, landing on her thigh in a gesture that might be reassuring, or maybe possessive. Maybe both. In any case, Rey likes it there. She lays her own hand on top of his. On seeing that, Han smiles in earnest. Chewbacca mutters his approval, from over Han’s shoulder.

 

“Oho! We-ell.” He chuckles, then tells Ben, “We got what we’ll need to rebuild the shield projectors and the hyperdrive—so we start this afternoon, kid, once it cools off out there.”

 

He and Chewbacca turn, making to leave, but Han pauses on the threshold and throws back: “Hey, uh, Rey, was it? You like caf, Rey? And butter pastries?”

 

She shakes her head. “I don’t…”

 

Ben is glaring at his father; his hand on her thigh clutches tighter, ever so slightly.

 

“Ah,” says Han, “more used to desert fare, huh? I knew someone like that, once.” His eyes go distant for a moment, before re-focusing on her. “Well Rey of Jakku, Chewie and I brought back some of the best butter pastries in the galaxy and we’ve got a pretty damn good caf machine on board. What d’ya say, make an old man happy by joining him and his crew for breakfast?”

 

Is this flirting? She’s not sure. It seems right on the very edge of it, and Ben’s body has gone utterly rigid, like the fate of his life hinges on her response.

 

“That sounds… nice,” she says, casting a questioning look at him. He doesn’t respond, merely continues glowering at Han.

 

“Great!” Han waves his hand in their direction, once again smirking. “I’ll, uh—give you two a moment.” And with that, he disappears back into the passageway.

 

Groaning, Ben shifts and presses a feather-light kiss on the ball of Rey’s shoulder. “He always does that.”

 

“Does what?” she asks, trying not to visibly exult in the feel of his lips on her tough, tanned skin.

 

“He has to be _on_ ,” he grouses. “Has to be _Han_. Still has something to prove, even now.”

 

Rey frowns. “What’s he trying to prove, Ben?”

 

Gently, she lays one hand on the tensed muscles of his abdomen. When he sucks in a breath at the contact, she can feel it; his response lends her the temerity to clamber into his lap, legs folded on either side of his hips. His eyes sink down to her chest, where they remain fixed, even as his hands come to rest on her waist.

 

“Ben?” she whispers.

 

He snorts, almost scornfully, to himself. “Nothing. I don’t know, I—just wanted you all to myself, for a while longer.”

 

“I think…” she trails off, choosing actions over words.

 

Rey doesn’t know where she gets the nerve— except maybe she does, because there’s the fact that she’s wanted to do this since the first moment she saw him, and the fact that he’s done nothing but try to take care of her since then, and the undeniable gesture of him placing his hand on her thigh in front of his father, which is proof enough for Rey that this is real, this is not in her head— so she rotates her hips slowly, grinding on him. And she he can feel _him_ , the shape of him, even through his trousers and hers, thick and increasingly hard with each pass.

 

“…You have me,” she murmurs, finally. “All to yourself, I mean. Here. Right now.”

 

Ben’s eyes flit up to hers; they’re dark, so dark she can’t see the smoky amber ring around his dilated pupils— just dark need, pure want. His hands slide down to her hips and tighten their grip, directing the speed and pressure with which she moves against him. Rey’s breath quickly becomes labored; raggedly, she pulls in air, and beneath her, Ben does the same. Their lips are a hair’s breadth apart. She leans closer, hoping he’ll kiss her. Between her legs, she can feel it— the storm’s rising up, threatening to bury her.

 

He clutches her, pressing her down harder, and she bites her lip to stave off a moan. Still, a whimper gets through. She wants it, wants to be buried. Needs this, whatever it is, and wants no one but Ben to give it to her.

 

Ben brings his lips to her throat, mouthing gently. Rey does moan now; she can’t hold it back. It feels so good, and something is going to happen, something like that night in her hammock with her hand down her pants—

 

“Hey kids!” comes Han’s voice, from amidships. “Enough hanky panky! Stop fooling around in there and come eat these damn pastries!”

 

Ben goes still. “Kriff,” he spits out, then releases her hips and sighs against her collarbone.

 

It’s not going to happen. Whatever they’d started, wherever they were going, the mission has been aborted by the sound of Ben’s father’s voice. Rey wants to cry, she’s so frustrated, but instead she simply says, “Should we—”

 

“You go,” he bites out, gentling the harsh command with a pat on her thighs. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’m just—need to use the ‘fresher.”

 

Disappointment. Rey tries to hide it, tries to brush it off, but it creeps in anyway. “Okay,” she says, soft.

 

Belatedly, she returns the chaste kiss he laid upon her cheek the other night with one brushed against his. Before she can pull away, he turns his head and their lips meet.

 

And then they’re kissing.

 

She is kissing Ben. And he is kissing her back.

 

Her pulse sings out in jubilant celebration, and the pressure of their lips together tears a fierce noise from him, throaty, like it’s rising up from the depths of his chest. He runs his hands up and down the outside of her thighs. Straining up towards her, he captures her lips more firmly with his own. It’s a tentative kiss, experimental and questing. She holds onto his shoulders, for balance and because they’re nice shoulders; she likes the feel of them, strong and sure under her palms. His nose jabs her cheek for a moment until he tilts his head and she tilts hers, and then her eyes flutter closed, because it’s _perfect_.

 

For a long time— or maybe it’s only a short while?— there is just this perfect first kiss. His hands soothe her while his lips tease her; without Rey’s consciously deciding to do so, her hips begin to move again. A groan, his or hers, maybe both, and then Ben pulls away.

 

He sucks in a deep breath. Rey imitates the action, gasping. They stare at each other, profoundly and undeniably affected by the kiss.

 

Finally, Ben speaks, his voice a low growl. “I—we—see you at the breakfast table,” he settles on.

 

Rey nods at him, feeling a little sheepish at her enthusiasm but pleased that he’s matched it. She thrills when his lips twitch in that way of his, that not-quite smile. Lowering her face until their foreheads tap, she brushes a light kiss across the bridge of his prominent nose.

 

That elicits a final frustrated groan. He unseats her, carefully depositing her on the mattress beside him.

 

There is a moment between them, after he stands, hands clasped in front of himself. He turns and looks down at her, and it’s almost as if Rey can see inside his mind, see the battle waging there: one side argues they could close and lock the blast door and continue this, the other parries that his father would never let him live it down if they did, that his father never lets him live anything down. A distant memory, blue skin and a shapely bust, which he squashes down the moment it arises.

 

Personally, she knows which side of the battle she’s on— she doesn’t give a frizz what Han Solo thinks, not right this second. She just wants his body back, close to hers. But she _does_ have to wonder about that, if he’s done this before. If he knows what he’s doing.

 

Ben sighs. Reaching out, he strokes one of her cheeks and Rey offers him as reassuring smile as she can. At that he nods, then lumbers off towards the ‘fresher.

 

And Rey is left seated in the berth, needy and overheated, pondering where exactly things might have gone, if they _had_ continued.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Belly full of butter pastries and caf, Rey says to the Solo men, “This has been—wonderful. Absolutely. But I have to go now.” She glances at Ben, who’s working his jaw, glaring down into his mug. “Work to be done.”

 

Han quirks an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What d’you do to make a living around here, kid?”

 

Both of them are seated, long legs stretched out, in the yellowing semi-circular booth of the main hold. Even if they weren’t dressed similarly— heavy belts and blaster pistol holsters holding up tight trousers that are tucked into high boots, with dingy stained shirts and darks vests— even if they didn’t have the same high cheekbones, full mouths, and long noses, Rey would know that they were father and son in how they look like a matching pair, sitting side by side with their dented tin mugs full of oversweetened caf. Han sniffs, takes a sip. Ben does the same not a second later, in exactly the same way: sniff, sip.

 

Like father, like son. In some ways. The lopsided grin on Han’s face doesn’t extend to Ben’s, although there is that ever-present ghost of a smile haunting his somber expression. Always just barely discernible, but never completely absent.

 

“Salvaging,” she tells him. “In the Starship Graveyard.”

 

Han presses his lips together contemplatively. “Tough job.”

 

“Han,” Ben rumbles, that warning tone back again.

 

“Ach, don’t _Han_ me,” he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand towards Ben, “that’s Leia’s job.” He shifts back to Rey. “Listen kid—”

 

“Rey.” She offers a smile to Ben, who looks less than amused, then repeats to Han: “My name is Rey.”

 

“‘Course it is, I know that.” Han looks between Rey and Ben. Grins. “Look, me and Chewie here, we’re not as spry as we used to be—”

 

From one of the sackcloth-covered crates on the far side of the room, where the Wookiee has been quietly enjoying his own caf, there emanates an indignant protest.

 

Han glances his way. “Okay, okay, we get it pal—you understand what he said?”

 

“Er,” Rey says, shrugging, “I know a bit. He’s—not old?”

 

“Never lets me forget that in Wookiee years, he’s in the prime of his life and I’m just a teenager,” Han supplies. “A kid, like my kid.”

 

“I’m twenty-nine.” Ben hasn’t looked up from his caf, but he does now— straight at Rey. Is he mad at her, for what happened in the berth? No, he takes her hand, smoothing his thumb across her knuckles; he isn’t, she decides, searching his annoyed-looking grimace. Not at her, anyway. He seems to default to a kind of sullen silence around his father. They’re partners, but they’re not the same in temperament. Maybe he takes after his mother.

 

 _Oil and water,_ she thinks. Ben loves his father— or at least, she believes he does— but she can imagine that they don’t always get along.

 

All of a sudden it strikes Rey, that in all the years that she’s hoped for her family’s return, she’s never thought about what her relationship with them might be like when they do. Will _she_ get along with _her_ father? Her mother? Does she have siblings? Will they like her?

 

She has to imagine they will. No, she knows it. She knows they’ll like her. No. They’ll _love_ her. She’s theirs, after all— it’s just that something went wrong. There was a mistake. But when they come back for her, there won’t be any bad blood. They’ll be a happy family.

 

They have to be.

 

Han scoffs, drawing her attention back to the conversation. “Twenty nine? Yeah—still a kid.” He relaxes deeper into the booth seat, bringing his booted feet up to perch on the edge of the holotable. “Well, kid—'scuse me, _Rey_ —we could use another hand for repairs on the _Falcon_. What d’ya say? Take a few days off from scavenging, help us get this beauty back on her legs?”

 

“I—I don’t know—” she stammers, gaze darting back and forth between the two men.

 

“He’d pay you.” Ben’s eyes slide over to his father, a hint of something sly in the lift of one dark eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you, Han?”

 

Han sucks on his teeth, looking like someone just shoved something sour in his mouth. For a long moment, he stares at Ben with narrowed eyes. “Ye _p_ ,” he says at last, popping the ‘p.’ “Sure thing. We’ll pay you for your help.”

 

Ben’s got that eager look again when he turns back to her, and his father nods his head slowly, studying her. When he notices his son’s expression, the old man’s eyes soften, and he gives them both a rueful smile. Then he shrugs, seemingly letting go of any reluctance.

 

“The going rate, let’s say,” he suggests. “Uh… twenty credits a day, how ‘bout?”

 

Rey has no money. She’s never had any money, not as far back as she can remember. The question of what she’ll do when they leave, when she must return to the monotony and hardship of her life, nags at her, but she sets it aside. Credits. Money. All her own.

 

“Deal,” she says, scrunching her nose in delight. Under the table, Ben’s big hand lands on her thigh again, right above the knee. It rests there, solid and warm and comforting. When she looks over at him, he draws a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

 

“Good,” he murmurs, nodding. “Good.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

She wants to kiss him again. Wants to sit on him, wants to rub herself all over him until she feels the sandstorm rise and fall inside herself. Wants him to feel that too, wants to have that with him.

 

But Han sticks her with Chewbacca, who needs an extra set of hands as he does some minor repairs around the ship, which is how she ends up sitting cross-legged atop the _Falcon_ once the afternoon heat has begun to subside.

 

She’s trying not to stare down at the sands, where Han and Ben stand at a remove from the ship; they squint against the slanted light as they speak in low tones. Rey can’t help but wonder what they’re discussing. Is it her?

 

Does she want it to be her?

 

 _“Sub-loop spanner,”_ Chewbacca requests. Without looking, she plucks the tool from the kit and hands it over to him. He grumbles his distracted thanks.

 

Ben stands straighter, taller than his father. His posture is better. Han is speaking, gesticulating with his hands in a way that suggests he’s reeling off a list. Pursing his lips, Ben gives a tight nod. Han continues, and Ben rolls his head back and along his shoulder, clearly exasperated.

 

She wishes she could hear them.

 

“What d’you think they’re talking about?” she blurts out, wincing but looking towards Chewbacca for an answer all the same; she’s only human, after all.

 

Chewbacca yowls out what she thinks is a laugh. _You,”_ he says. _“They’re talking about you, little one.”_

 

He’s probably right. He would know, better than she would.

 

Ben holds up a hand and, turning to his father, declares something to Han with a sweeping wave of his arm. Whatever it is, it stops the old man in his tracks; she can read the shock in the way his jaw drops, the way he pulls his head back, gaping at his son.

 

And then… he shrugs. Holds out a hand, which Ben takes. They shake, and Han pulls him into a hug. Ben appears to tolerate it, even when Han slaps him on the back. He might even be sagging into his father’s embrace, although Rey can’t be entirely sure from this distance.

 

By the core of everything, does she wish she could hear what they’d said to each other.

 

But she gets something of a clue, because when they pull away and Ben’s dark eyes seek out hers, that quirk at the edges of his lips is back. Then it cracks open, and Ben—

 

Ben is smiling.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After Chewbacca has dismissed her with the amused assurance that he no longer needs her help, Rey floats around the ship, simply luxuriating in a deeper study of its eccentricities.

 

Ben finds her in the cockpit, nosing around in the circuitry overhead the starboard console.

 

“This ship is _weird_ ,” she declares, upon noticing him. “It’s got almost none of its original parts, and—there’s definitely more than one droid brain operating the main computer.”

 

He pushes off the entryway where he’s been leaning, and moves closer.

 

“It’s a piece of junk.”

 

His tone is wry and he’s returned to almost-smiling. He comes so close she can feel his body heat, warming her back.

 

She beams up at him. “I think you’ll have a much easier time breaking atmo and jumping to lightspeed—” here she pauses, turning once more to the console and wrenching a component from the wiring, which sends her stumbling back towards him, “—if you bypass the compressor,” she finishes, with a thick swallow. She presents the extraneous compressor for his perusal.

 

Ben tilts his head. One heavy hand falls to her hip and the other takes the compressor, examining it. Brows drawn together, he looks up at the circuitry. Maybe he finds it satisfactory, because he squeezes lightly, and tugs— forcing her to take another half-step back, her behind connecting with his groin— but she’s not complaining.

 

Maybe she even leans her body into his.

 

“You’re right,” he says, calmly.

 

“Well, I’ll be damned!” Han’s gruff voice exclaims, and not a second later, he appears in the entryway. “What I wouldn’t give to hear him say that to me, from time to time!” He grins. “You’re a lucky woman, Rey.”

 

Expecting Ben to release her and jump away— feeling personally like she’s been caught misbehaving— she glances back at him. Wordlessly, he pulls her closer, wrapping both arms around her waist. Han’s grin grows wider.

 

“Shut up, Han,” he mutters, nosing against her pulled-back hair.

 

Han shrugs affably. “No procreating in the cockpit, kids. Take it to the crews’ quarters.” He pauses, eyebrows lifted. “And this time—close the damn door, will ya?”

 

A heated blush blooms across Rey’s cheeks. “I—no, we were just—”

 

“Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time. Where do you think lil’ Benny boy here was conceived?” Han laughs as he disappears once more, ambling back out into the passageway.

 

Ben sighs.

 

“Was that a joke?” she asks, under her breath.

 

“I wish,” he groans, against the crown of her head.

 

 

. . .

 

 

That night, after a dinner eaten in the main hold, just the four of them— Han teasing his son the whole time, dropping hints about him becoming a man now, whatever that’s supposed to mean, Chewbacca in turn teasing Han for his own youthful misadventures— Ben catches Rey in the passageway outside the ‘fresher. With a finger pressed to her lips, he ushers her silently into the forward hold, shutting the heavy blast doors behind them.

 

Then he herds her back against the doors and lowers his lips to hers. She flings her arms around his neck, pulling him in closer. For another moment, there is just the hypnotic feel of their entwined bodies, this kiss— bolder and more heated than this morning’s.

 

“Spend the night again,” he says, when they break apart. “Stay here, with me.”

 

“I can’t,” she protests, anguished at the thought of separating but fully aware she’s already pushed her luck by staying away one night. Distantly, some part of her mind trips a siren, warning her that this is dangerous. She’s becoming too attached, too quickly. Ben blinks at her with disappointment and she hates that look, especially on him, so she tries to explain. “I—I need to go back home. Just… in case.”

 

He raises his fist, banging it on the door behind her. Not hard or loud— a muted, half-hearted display of his frustration. “Rey, I want—”

 

“Come with me,” she blurts. It’s a snap decision and she can't be sure it’s a good one, but so far Ben has been more than happy to give her everything she wants, and what she wants is him. But she also wants to be in her home, in her safe space, in the place she’s carved out for herself in this world.

 

She can have both, can’t she?

 

“Okay.” He accepts with a nod, his pelvis pinning her to the door, his torso an anchor, pressing her to the metal. Rey doesn’t mind it; this feels nice. Safe.

 

His hips roll smoothly as he plants a trail of soft kisses from her ear down to her clavicle, and once again, she can feel him through his trousers. All at once, she is confident in this inevitability: they’re going to lie together, the way she’s heard other salvagers talk about, at Niima Outpost. Maybe tonight, maybe not. But they will. The thought sends her into a scorching tailspin— slick and pulsing in her underwear, her stomach fluttering excitedly— and she jumps, bringing her legs up around his waist, trusting him to catch her, hold her. He does, with a low groan.

 

As sure as she knows that her name is Rey, she knows that they’ll get there. She’s going to share this with him. And she can’t think of a damn thing she wants more.

 

“Let’s go,” she croons. He nods, delivering one final peck to her neck, then disentangles himself from her and takes a step back, adjusting himself in his leather pants. Tipping his head back in that way that makes him look regal and imposing, he sweeps his arm out with a dip of his chin, gesturing for her to leave first.

 

Walking on air, she does.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Upon entering the AT-AT through the modified escape hatch that serves as her front door— it’s laughable, how low he must stoop to get through it— Ben gravitates towards the large expanse of hull where she’s carved out her tally of lonely days. She can’t read his expression because he has his back to her, Rey is nonetheless wracked with shame.

 

He knows that she’s been here for a long time. But seeing the evidence, carved into the hull line by line, day by day, makes her feel pitiful and small.

 

She has to turn away from the wall, cannot bear to watch him study her sad secret record-keeping, so she busies herself with activating the glow-lanterns.

 

Ben’s hand lands on her arm, interrupting her progress after just one lamp. He strokes down the length of her linen wraps before taking her hand in his grasp. Gently, he tugs her around and into his embrace. Rey goes willingly, readily, tucking her face into the soft faded cotton of his shirt.

 

He clears his throat. “I want…”

 

“Yes?” Her voice breaks only a little, barely noticeable. She’s proud of that.

 

“Force, I don’t know.” He cranes his neck, sweeping a series of kisses across her cheek. “I want to touch you—I want you to feel good.”

 

Rey recalls Han’s teasing, his jibes about Ben ‘fully’ becoming a man. “Have there been others, Ben? Before me?”

 

He pulls back and works his jaw, avoiding her eyes, balling the hem of her tunic in his big fist. It’s all the answer she needs.

 

“Oh,” she murmurs. “Did you love them?”

 

One sharp shake of his head, his dark hair bouncing from the movement. “It was at a brothel.”

 

“A what?”

 

“A… pleasurehouse,” he clarifies, and it’s easy enough for Rey to deduce the meaning of such a word, such a place. “Han took me. Thought he was—I don’t know. Helping me, I guess. I was your age.”

 

She swallows. “What—what did you do there?”

 

“We don’t have to—”

 

“No,” she cuts in. He shudders, slightly, so she rubs her cheek against his pectoral then glances up at him through her lashes. “I want to know.” The smile she offers him is tentative, but she can see he appreciates it, because he nods in acquiescence.

 

“She was Twi’lek.” He takes a deep breath, as if bracing himself. “She showed me—how to touch her, how she liked it. And how to—” he falters, throat flushed, “stroke—her lekku.”

 

“Oh.” Rey imagines she’s probably as flushed as he is. Her face is certainly heated, not just because of his words, but because of how tightly he’s holding her. She’s never touched anyone like this, never _been_ touched liked this.

 

Ben’s eyes stay fixed to a point somewhere behind her head. “She—used her mouth. On me.”

 

“Oh,” she says again. So he’s not quite so innocent as her. But then, he’s a decade older— did she really expect him to be? Rey bites her lip, unsure how to process this new information. This emotion isn’t jealousy, she realizes— it’s curiosity. She needs to know what it feels like, to be touched by him like that.

 

“Rey—” he starts, sounding deflated.

 

“Did you like that?”

 

That brings his eyes back to her, piercing in their intensity. “No,” he breathes, then shakes his head. “Yes. I—it felt good. But—hollow. There wasn’t any—”

 

“Any what?”

 

She sounds very faint, very far away from herself. Ben tilts his head, watching her. When he surges forward, catching her in a brief kiss, and Rey makes no move to repel him— he sighs against her lips, the not-quite-a-smile returning.

 

“Feeling. I didn’t _know_ her.”

 

He takes her hand again, then steps back and cautiously folds himself into the hammock. A tug is all the suggestion Rey needs to settle herself in his lap, once more. Like this morning. His sex and hers, touching, even if just through their clothes. Can he sense how how she feels down there, how it throbs, how wet she’s getting?

 

“I didn’t love—” he cuts his thought short when she does a little twist of her hips. “ _Kriff_ , Rey.”

 

“And me?” Breath held, hips gyrating, Rey is desperate for this affirmation. And yes, it’s only been a few days, but he can feel this too, can’t he? He must. She leans over him, tangling her fingers in the net behind his head.

 

He stares up into her eyes. “You—”

 

“Do you know _me_ , Ben?” she interjects, unable to help herself. “Do you—”

 

“Yes,” he chokes out. “Yes, Rey. Yes.”

 

“I don’t have any lekku.” One hand drifts up self-consciously, to trace the buns that scale the back of her head. “I don’t have a lot here, either,” she adds, hand dropping down to her chest. Still she moves, riding him; Ben’s eyes follow her hand, then become riveted to her breasts. “I’m not clean, I don’t have any perfume—”

 

“Don’t care,” he growls. “Not about any of that. I want all of you, just like this.” He presses his lips together, nostrils flaring on his heavy exhale. “Come on, sweetheart. Really move your hips for me.”

 

“Like this?” she asks, panting. The pressure of the inseam against her sex is just right, and he’s hard beneath her. Twitching? Is that him, or is she just imagining it? It’s good, R’iia, it’s good. The storm begins to swell; Rey collapses onto his chest, using his shoulders as leverage to rock herself against him.

 

“Perfect.” His hands run wild trails over her body, up to her breasts, cupping, then wandering away, as if there is too much for him to learn and too little time. “Just perfect.”

 

“I want to—use my mouth on you,” Rey implores. “Will you show me how?”

 

“Yes,” he groans.

 

It’s not very bright in the AT-AT; the lone lit lantern casts a faded yellow glow over them, barely illuminating their faces. Yet it’s all the more intimate for being dim— Rey closes her eyes, gives in to the rolling pleasure rising up from her cunt, envisions the sandstorm. And Ben is there in her mind, riding the storm; she can almost hear the grains of sand pummeling the hull of the AT-AT. In her mind, Ben is unpanicked, moving with purpose, without fear.

 

“What else?” she cries, nuzzling blindly at his jawline. “What else will you show me?”

 

“I’ll—do the same.” He sounds strained; the twin bands of his arms across her back tighten. She’s begun to sweat, it’s dripping down her temple, beading along her spine and under her breasts; his forehead is similarly damp. She wants to lick it, wants to taste him. Beneath her, his own hips respond, rising up to meet hers, joining her in this strange dance.

 

“Your mouth?”

 

“Would you—want that?” One hand reaches down, sneaking under her tunic to brush the soft tender skin of her belly before seeking lower, petting her through her trousers. “I could kiss you, here,” he tells her. He’s breathing heavily, panting— like her— but his words sound assured. Completely confident. “You’d like it.”

 

“I—I think I do. I would.”

 

“Okay,” he huffs. “Anything you want.”

 

“Can we… keep…” she can hardly speak, for feeling— so much feeling, so many thoughts and emotions whirling around her. The storm, the storm. It’s coming, it’s rising. Faintly, she hears a heavy thudding noise, but right now she can’t focus on that. Everything is good and soft but hard at the same time, bright ribbons of color flitting through her veins in a way that makes her toes curl; she’s so warm, her body a sparking live wire and a wispy cirrus cloud, all at once. “I think—”

 

“Yes.” His voice is a deep dark rumble, dark like the back of her eyelids, deep like the roar of the storm. She could lose herself in it, in him, without fear. “Yeah,” he repeats. “Just like that. Rey, I’m gonna—”

 

“I’m—ah,” she moans, high and breathy. Then all that building pressure, that surging upswell of pleasure, crashes down upon her, more satisfying than any single thing in her life. “Oh!” is about all she can manage; she’s shaking, trembling really, and panting against his throat.

 

Ben grabs her behind in his big hands at the same time he finds her lips, curling in on himself so they can kiss, even as he moves her limp body, rubbing her up and down the front of his trousers. Not even a minute later, he speeds up, and Rey feels another fluttering, a gentle echo of the first storm; he moans wantonly, clutching her tighter, ever-tighter. His hips stutter through a few more thrusts, then he too falls pliant, lying back in the hammock.

 

Finally, Rey finds the energy to open her eyes—

 

And gasps in shock. “Ben,” she hisses, urgent, poking him in the stomach. “Look.”

 

“Hm?” He opens his own eyes and gasps, renewing his tight grip on her. “Kriff!”

 

All around them, hovering in the air, are the contents of the _Hellhound Two_. Grains of sand, her fighter pilot doll, old starship components, cables, the bloggin-leather pilot seats, the fuel cells used to power her generator— all of it, floating.

 

“Did we—are we—” Rey can’t seem to find the words to get at the question properly. When she glances back at Ben, his eyes are wide and round, wider than she’s ever seen. Jerkily, not breathing, he nods.

 

“We must have, when we were—distracted. But I thought…” his voice fades away into silent gaping, his jaw still working although no sounds are produced. After a long, puzzled beat: “It can’t be. I don’t—I’m like my father. I’m not sensitive to the Force.”

 

So. Neither of them are doing this on purpose. Is it even _them_ , doing this?

 

Rey peers deeper into the darkness of her home, and gasps again— one of the portside hulls is dented all over, as though some great beast pounded on it while they were wound up in each other and preoccupied. “Is that—” she starts, pointing to the damaged durasteel plate.

 

“The Force,” he mutters, shaking his head. A soft, disbelieving huff. “The kriffing Force.” Then his expression shifts to one of resolve; gently, he clasps the back of her neck, bringing her body back down to rest against his. “Relax, Rey. Clear your mind.” The instruction is hushed, the last gasp of a wild storm as it rolls out.

 

Rey does as he’s bid, inhaling deeply and stilling her thoughts. He nods, almost as if he is partaking of her forced calm, and matches his breathing to hers. On the next shared exhale, all the various belongings and sand in the AT-AT that have been suspended in the air drop, without warning, to the ground.

 

She blinks. Everything is in a state of disarray, but nothing seems damaged or broken, besides the battered hull. So there’s that, at least. “Did that—happen to you? Before? I mean, at the—”

 

He shakes his head. Swallows thickly. Looks down at her, curious. “When I first saw you, I felt you. And you felt me.”

 

“Yes,” she agrees. “Is it—are we—what _was_ that?”

 

“My family is strong with the Force,” he explains. “But I’ve never—I didn’t—”

 

Rey rearranges herself so that she’s stretched out on top of him. “We did that. We made everything—float.”

 

“Yes.”

 

And this is strange. This needs to be explored, to be understood. But there’s another concern, more pressing, which she needs to have assuaged by Ben right now.

 

“Was that—was it good, what we did, Ben? Did we—do it right?”

 

He takes her hand, palm to palm; his other arm, slung around her, squeezes carefully. “Yes. We did.” Under his breath, so faint she thinks maybe he doesn’t want her to hear, he adds, “I think.”

 

“Can we—do it again?”

 

“Now?” That twitch of his lips; Rey purses her lips to one side, to keep from laughing.

 

“No,” she says, “but, I—that is… some time?”

 

“Whenever you want.”

 

“Good,” she murmurs, wriggling in the hammock until she’s nestled more comfortably into the negative spaces of his body. “Good.”

 

All around them, her home is a mess. Her underwear is a mess, maybe his is too. But when Rey glances up at his long face, the mountain ridge of his nose, the dunes of his cheekbones and the towering bluffs of his brow, she finds his eyes are fixed on her, dark and clear and fond. He looks serene, unbothered by the chaos of their coupling. Like he’s already accepted the surreal events, maybe even like they weren’t as surprising to him as they were to her.

 

His unruffled gaze soothes her concerns. Tangled up together in her too-small hammock, sweat cooling on their bodies, his bulk like a gravity well that pulls the netting down and keeps her anchored to him— Rey lets her eyes slip closed, lets herself slide into sleep.

 

And she sleeps deeply, even better than she did last night, better than she has for years. She dreams of meeting Ben, again and again, in the becalmed eye of a spinning sandstorm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm very sorry about the delay between chapters this time around- I had a couple other projects that I was working on, which slowed down my progress on this one! But updates should be more regular from here on out. ☺ Some notes?
> 
> Where is [Hanna City](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hanna_City/Legends)? [Erysthes](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Erysthes)?
> 
> Who are the [Twi'lek](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Twi'lek/Legends)? [Kanjiklub](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kanjiklub)?
> 
> What's a [holoprojector](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holoprojector/Legends), [holorecorder](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Holorecorder/Legends), and [hologram](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hologram/Legends)?
> 
> Does sabacc have [Ace cards](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Sabacc_cards)? [It does! The Ace of coins, sabres, and staves.]
> 
> What's a [sonic lamp](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_lamp) and [glow lantern](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Glow_lantern)? What's a [chronometer](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chronometer/Legends)?
> 
> Are there really [brothels](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Brothel) in the gffa? [Yes! Isn't that wild?]
> 
> What's a [bacta tank](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bacta_tank/Legends)?
> 
> What's a [gravity well](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gravity_well/Legends)?
> 
> Do you think [vaporator mushrooms](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vaporator_mushroom/Legends) are any good? I'd be willing to try them. [Butter pastries](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Butter_pastry), too. Probably not [Chak-root](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chak-root), though.
> 
> What's [Plasteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Plasteel/Legends)?
> 
> The _Millennium Falcon_ apparently has three [droid brains](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Droid_brain) which operate the main computer. They come from a [slicer droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Slicer_droid), a [V-5 transport droid](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/V-5_transport_droid), and [L3-37](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/L3-37).
> 
> What's a [blast door](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blast_door/Legends), a [fuel cell](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_cell), a [hyperdrive](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperdrive/Legends), and a [sub-loop spanner](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sub-loop_spanner)?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me for this chapter. Thank you for reading. And thank you, as always, to my **wonderful** beta-reader [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado), who not only catches all my typos and grammar slips but who really boosted my confidence on this chapter. She is a diamond and everyone should go read her stuff! 
> 
> Next up, we're headed to Chandrila! If you have a moment and feel so inclined, let me know what you thought of this chapter? Feedback is very much appreciated! ❤


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**34 ABY.**

 

When Rey and Ben return to Niima Outpost late the next morning, after waking in each other’s arms— overheated and sweat-damp, their muscles sore from a night spent jumbled up in the hammock, but happy, so happy _—_ Mashra is waiting for her, at the edge of the junkyard.

 

“Rey!” Her voice booms across the marketplace and Unkar’s stand, and she waves her arms for emphasis, as though she fears Rey might walk past her without acknowledgment.

 

“Mashra?” she puzzles, when she and Ben have drawn close enough to speak at a normal volume. “Are you alright?”

 

The Abednedo shakes her head; flitting her anxious gaze between Ben and Rey, she wrings her hands. “A minute, Rey?” she blurts, “… Alone?”

 

Ben peers down at Rey, making no move to go. Waiting for her to agree to Mashra’s request, she realizes, with a start. Waiting for her to tell him it’s okay to leave. Something in her chest flutters, at the gesture. Pushing herself up onto her toes, she cranes her neck and purses her lips in an unspoken request for a kiss, which he obliges readily. Then she nods, murmuring against his lips, “Go on, I’ll just be a moment.”

 

His face is clouded when they break apart, but he does as she’s asked without objection, sending only one wary glance in Mashra’s direction before turning and boarding the _Falcon_. Rey watches him ascend the ramp, admiring the broad breadth of him, the way his dark leather trousers pull tight around his backside and thighs.

 

“What were you doing with him?” Mashra’s question is innocent enough, but her sharp tone cracks like a whip through the lazy morning heat.

 

“Nothing,” she says, shifting her focus back to the closest thing she has to a matriarch. “Nothing, I—”

 

“Did he spend the night in your home? With you?”

 

Biting her lip, Rey glances around; no one is standing particularly close by, or paying them any mind. “Yes,” she breathes, leaning forward, a smile overtaking her face. “And it was wonderful. We—we did things, beautiful perfect things, and… after, he held me and we fell asleep together in my hammock.” A girlish giggle sneaks out, and she scrunches her nose in delight.

 

Mashra draws herself to her full height, eyes wide, one hairy hand pressed to her chest. “Rey,” she gasps. “How could you be so foolish?”

 

Perhaps Rey is drunk in some way— intoxicated off the hazy passion of their night spent together— because she hears the words Masha has spoken, but cannot seem to grasp their significance. Trying to keep up, she replies, “Well… I do have a bit of a crick in my neck, but I don’t thi—”

 

“You need to be careful!” Thin lips pressed into a disapproving slash across her snout, Mashra clamps her hand down on Rey’s shoulder. “What you’re doing—that’s how women end up with children they can’t feed. Is that what you want?” She tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “A babe?”

 

Now Rey takes her meaning; she gives a weak laugh, trying to deflect. “We haven’t… we didn’t even take our clothes off.” She holds her hands up, a gesture of innocence. “I haven’t done anything wrong.” Mashra looks utterly unconvinced, already shaking her head in disappointment, so she adds, “Ben _cares_ about me!”

 

“He’s trouble,” Mashra counters. “If your dear mother was here, she’d agree with me.”

 

“But she’s not, is she?”

 

Rey regrets the words the moment they’ve escaped her lips; Mashra recoils, shocked, as if she’s slapped her. Mournfully, she tries to rectify her mistake, crying, “You don’t know anything about him!”

 

Mashra sighs. “Don’t I? I _know_ who he is. I know who his father is. I know what they do—” she pauses, hand tightening on Rey’s shoulder as she dips her head, forcing Rey to meet her dark unblinking gaze. “I don’t want that kind of life for you, Rey. You deserve better.”

 

“He cares about me,” she repeats, in a sad small voice. Mashra blows another exasperated breath out through her long slitted nostrils.

 

No, she can’t do this, can’t be here. Cannot listen to Mashra say these things, cannot bear to have the glow of amber taken away. Not yet.

 

Not yet.

 

She forces out, “Mashra, he lo—” but… no. She can’t say it, can’t presume like that. And not to Mashra, not the first time. She wants it to be true, but it’s too much to say aloud. Too new, too precious. Rey swerves away from the word, from the thought, demurring, “I have to go. Han Solo’s paying me to help fix his ship.”

 

And with a final sigh, then a nod, Mashra releases her hold on Rey. She takes a step back, still staring at Rey unhappily. “Remember what I said, child,” she warns. “Be. Careful.”

 

“All right,” is all she can muster, a weak concession half-spoken, half-swallowed, because she’s already pivoting towards the ship, already stumbling away from this unwelcome dose of sobering reality.

 

She doesn’t look back.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, seated once more in the main hold with a steaming mug of caf in her hands and Ben’s arm draped around her shoulders, she can almost forget Mashra’s exhortation. What does she know, anyway? So she’s heard of Han Solo, and his son. So what? She doesn’t know them, not like Rey does.

 

She _does_ know them, doesn’t she? Conducting a study first of Han’s craggy face, the casual way he lounges in the booth, the rakish half-smile he shoots at Chewbacca in response to the Wookiee’s disgruntled harping about the _Falcon_ ’s erratic behavior, and then of Ben, reserved and thoughtful, sipping at his caf, dressed in the same clothes, as per usual, sitting not as loosely as his father but not as rigidly as he sometimes does, his body warm and solid and flush with hers, Rey thinks: _maybe, maybe not. But I could. They’d let me get to know them._

 

They want her here. She knows that much. It’s enough.

 

“So,” she starts, interrupting Han and Chewbacca’s sleepy banter, “this… business… you do. It’s smuggling, right?”

 

Han chokes on his caf, coughing for several seconds before he regains control. Looking at her askance, he barks, “Who told you that?”

 

She glances at Ben, who offers no comment. Just continues staring down into his mug intently. “Everyone knows about Han Solo,” she reasons, “the famous smuggler.”

 

A tense moment follows, wherein no one speaks. Finally, Han puffs out an amused breath through his nose, a gesture she knows all too well by now, having watched Ben react just the same many times before.

 

“Hear that Chewie?” He knocks back the rest of his caf, then slams the mug on the holotable. “ _Everyone_.” He rolls his eyes. “Famous!”

 

Rey grins, relieved. “Famous,” she affirms. “Across the galaxy.”

 

She catches Ben’s roll of his own eyes, as he finishes his caf. Rey leans further into him. A happy little shiver runs down her spine when he presses a soft kiss against her hair— right in front of his father, without reservation. She tilts her head back to search his face for hints of a reaction but he just blinks down at her, sleepy and unruffled. A sense of optimism rolls off of him in waves, or at least, Rey thinks she can sense that. Then again, maybe it’s just her own infatuation taking over.

 

Han clears his throat and reluctantly, Rey tears her eyes away from Ben’s, looking once more at the old man’s weathered face.

 

“Ben,” he says, with a knowing smirk. “Since we’re letting Rey in on our operation here, maybe you oughta… show her the ropes.”

 

Ben huffs. “You sure, Han?”

 

But he’s wearing that ghost of a grin, that twitch at the edges of his full mouth. Rey wants to claim it for her own, right here in front of Han and Chewie. How can she pretend otherwise? She’s not used to this— this want, this need, this desire clanging in harmony with her thrumming nerves, her pounding heart— she’s lived so long on her own, just doing any old thing she felt like, really, and it’s maddening, the amount of self-restraint required for her to sit here calmly, after what she and Ben did together last night. She settles for beaming up at him, although her muscles have all gone rigid; he arches a brow down at her before looking back to his father.

 

There’s a beat, then another; Han appraises her, Ben appraises Han, and Rey, waiting with no small measure of disquiet for Han’s approval, swirls around the errant grounds left behind in the last swallow of her caf.

 

“Yeah,” Han replies at last, with a chuckle. “Yeah. ‘Course. We can trust her.”

 

He’s smiling, lopsided but genuine, when Rey brings herself to meet his gaze. Gratification, validation, the warm glow of affection, all of them move through her, settling her nerves.

 

A quick jerk of Han’s chin, and then: “Come on, Chewie. Let’s get to work on those shield projectors—try and get in an hour or two, before the heat’s too much.”

 

Sighing happily, Rey relaxes once more. Ben gently squeezes her shoulder, so she leans back, pressing a kiss to the part of his body that’s closest— the hollow of his throat.

 

The amber— fiery and delicate and as strong as if it had sat deep beneath the ground for a million years— it’s still around them, protecting this new thing they’re exploring, despite Mashra’s attempt to shatter it. She’s safe here, on this ship, in Ben’s arms. Trusted; Han said so. Valued. Needed.

 

Ben’s gazing down at her, eyes soft.

 

Loved, maybe.

 

 _For now_ , warns a treacherous little voice in the back of her mind that sounds like Mashra’s. _Not yet,_ she tells it. _Don’t take this from me._

 

_Not yet._

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Doing what we do—it’s not that difficult,” Ben confesses to her, as he strides along one of the _Falcon_ ’s passageways.

 

“It isn’t?” Rey hurries to keep up, drinking in his noble profile, outlined against the greying bulwarks by the ship's dull lighting.

 

His nostrils flare, subtly. “Not if you do it right.”

 

“Well Han Solo must be doing it right then, if he’s so famous.”

 

“No.” He shakes his head, turning to lead her down a passageway that takes them aftward, towards the engineering bay. “Han Solo _hasn’t_ done it right—that’s why he’s famous.”

 

“But—”

 

“He was a general, in the war.” He comes to a halt by an unremarkable piece of paneling near the engineering bay’s blast doors. “Fought alongside my mother and uncle—awarded the Medal of Honor. After, he continued serving as a soldier, a pilot, even a guard for my mother." A pause, then he adds, "For a while.”

 

“Oh,” she says, feeling sheepish. She should have known that, probably.

 

“A hero, people say." He gives a contemptuous toss of his hair. “But bit by bit,” he pauses to elbow the lower right corner of the panel, which comes loose under the blow, “he slid back into his old ways.”

 

The panel swings opens, revealing the complex face of a magna-lock safe; Ben shoots her a tight-lipped grimace. “Then he passed them on to me.”

 

“Are there—secret doors like this, elsewhere on the ship?” Rey asks, fiddling with the hidden hinges of the panel.

 

“All over.”

 

“Will you show me more of them?”

 

He exhales, a short puff of air blown out quickly, then shrugs. “If you want.”

 

Rey considers the safe for a moment— its blinking lights, the keypad where its code must be entered. “I guess… we should be working. On the ship,” she says, grudgingly. “The hyperdrive? That _is_ what Han’s pay—”

 

“I have a better idea,” he cuts across her, taking her hand. With no more explanation than that, he leads her towards the crew’s quarters. This time, she notices, he’s careful to press a few buttons on the control pad beside the entryway, causing the blast door to shut behind them with a hiss.

 

Then he turns, tipping his chin up so he can look down his nose at her. “Find the hidden compartment in here, and you get your pick of whatever’s inside,” he offers, commanding and serious.

 

Giddy, Rey bounces up onto the balls of her feet, resting a hand on his chest so she can bring her face close to his.

 

“Is it… your stuff?” she purrs.

 

Another shrug. “You’ll have to find out.” There’s a kind of steely resolution to his response; arms crossed, he seats himself on the berth— no, her berth, or rather, the one they shared— as if to reinforce that that’s all the help he’s going to give her.

 

So Rey gets to work. She pokes around for a while, elbowing panels the way that Ben did, pulling on the grated durasteel deck— which doesn’t budge— lifting up mattresses and pillows, and checking all the obvious, marked storage compartments underneath and around the bunks. It’s not as though she has no experience in this, hunting around in an old ship. But still, she favors thoroughness, so she works at her own pace, enjoying the heavy weight of Ben’s gaze on her as she moves about.

 

Finally, tipping her head back to scrutinize the overhead, she spots it: one of the panels is slightly less discolored than the rest, just above the berth where Ben is seated. Licking her lips, she climbs onto the lower of the two bunks, boots on the mattress beside Ben— not missing how his eyes linger on her posterior— then clambers up to the higher bunk. Kneeling on its mattress, one hand gripping its overhang for stability, she taps each corner of the pale tile carefully.

 

After tapping the last corner, it drops down into her hand.

 

Stored inside the dark cavity above the tile are a set of gold dice, a blaster pistol, a vibroblade, a small black satchel made of velvet-soft fabric, and a faded old postcard. Gingerly, Rey removes each item from the hiding spot, piling it up on the tile. Arms full of her loot, she eases her way back down before collapsing next to Ben on the lower bunk.

 

She gives him a pointed, victorious look and he smiles, wide, his cheeks creasing to either side of his crooked white teeth, his full lips.

 

“Not bad,” he says.

 

“Scavenger,” she reminds him. He hums his agreement, and she sets the stash on the mattress between them. “So—these _are_ all yours, aren’t they?”

 

He just smiles, untying the satchel’s strings and tipping it. The contents spill into his palm: two dozen little balls, black as night. The cabin's wan light makes them gleam silvery-blue. Each one is flawless, smooth and round and fit for a queen’s diadem, or so Rey imagines.

 

“Naboo night pearls,” he tells her. “Worth a fortune.”

 

She frowns. “And you keep them up there?”

 

“Where else?” He shrugs, offering up his pearl-filled palm for her scrutiny.

 

“The… safe?” she asks; it’s the obvious best choice, for something this valuable.

 

“That safe is the first place any competent pirate would look,” he scoffs, watching her take a single dark pearl and roll it between her pointer finger and thumb.

 

“ _I_ found them easy enough.” The smirk that goes along with her words is irrepressible, not that she tries very hard.

 

“Scavenger.” She huffs in protest at his using her word against her, but Ben hastily continues: “You’ve spent your life looking for things, haven’t you?” He leans in, stealing a glance at her lips before dragging his eyes back to hers. They’re dark, fathomless in a way Rey is beginning to recognize— in a way she’s beginning to crave.

 

“You’re good at it,” he murmurs. “Special.”

 

She blushes, diffident. “I s’pose.”

 

“Well, a promise is a promise,” he says, not appearing the least bit put out at ceding something from his cache to her. “What do you want to keep?”

 

 _Your heart, your body, this life we could have together,_ she almost says— is on the very verge of saying, before she decides against it. Some persistent trace of Mashra’s warning stills her tongue.

 

Rey looks down at his belongings, swallowing heavily against chagrin. Her inspection goes on for a while, long enough for her to steady her emotions. Squinting one eye, she aims the pistol at the far wall. Then she activates the vibroblade, turning it this way and that to study its near-imperceptible vibration. Next, she rolls the chipped dice. They’re weighted, she observes, with a nonplussed sigh.

 

Finally, she plucks the old postcard from the pile. It’s blank on the side where a message would normally be inscribed.

 

Ben, who has watched her do all this in his customary loaded silence, takes the postcard and turns it to the side with the picture. “Bespin,” he reads. “Cloud City. Ah, right. Han and I picked this up on a visit to Lando.”

 

“Lando Calrissian,” she prompts, more than a little breathless, just from the name. He _is_ one of the most famous and infamous criminals and war heroes in the galaxy, after all; it makes sense Ben would know him, would have visited him in the past— everyone knows about Lando and Han’s tumultuous partnership, from back in the day— but she’s still starstruck, at the idea of him.

 

“Yeah,” is his only response, besides a dry mirthless laugh.

 

Everything else in the cache is valuable or useful, save for this postcard. Its value must be merely sentimental. Rey knows all about those kinds of things, and it makes her want the postcard _desperately_. She wants nothing more than to have in her possession something that means so much to him, but… again, she curbs that impulse. Instead, she plucks a single pearl from his hand.

 

“This?” she checks with him.

 

“Just that?” His brow is furrowed; his eyes sweep over the other items on the mattress, then back to her.

 

“This is plenty.”

 

Ben nods, pressing his lips together. “It’s yours,” he says, eying her curiously.

 

“Good.” Biting the inside of her cheek, she rises and tucks the pearl away in an inner pocket of her satchel, which she rested by the crew quarters entryway when she first boarded the _Falcon_ this morning. She turns back to him, and thrills to find him observing her.

 

“Should we—” she inhales sharply, taking in his eager expression, “get to work now?”

 

“Probably.”

 

Though he agrees with her suggestion, his posture— leaning forward, knuckles white from how tightly he grips the edge of the berth— and his eyes— dark, glittering hungrily— do anything but.

 

She drifts back towards him, teasing, sing-song: “No rush, then?”

 

The look he gives her in response is frank yet sultry, filled with blatant meaning.

 

“Oh,” she breathes.

 

“Come here.” His hand, stretched out to her. Without hesitation, she takes it, letting him guide her down into his lap.

 

And for some mysterious span of time, during which the outside world seems to be held at bay by the blast doors, there is just them, just Rey and Ben. Rolling around on a lumpy old mattress, stealing time and kisses and ever-more-confident touches… they give themselves over, for a little while longer, to the opulence of young love.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The blaster she found in the overhead is an X-8 Night Sniper, he informs her, as they amble down the ventral ramp at twilight. Given to him by Chewie, on his eleventh birthday. The sky, so vast and clear above them, is tufted with clouds, a warm lavender-tinged pink, and for once, Jakku’s arid heat is not oppressive.

 

Just pleasant. Just welcome. The light breeze plays with the locks of hair that have escaped her buns, and Rey removes the tsu-seed linen cloth she wears draped over her sleeveless cotton shirt, then her linen arm wrappings. She flaps her arms gracelessly while Ben’s attention is diverted; he’s focused on setting up their targets, a few dozen paces away. The air feels lovely on her bare skin.

 

The Night Sniper is strapped snugly against the outside of her right thigh now, held there by a spare holster Ben found in one of the crew quarters’ compartments. He’d helped her tighten its buckles; although she hadn’t needed the help, she’d allowed it, because his long dexterous fingers had lingered, as he worked, brushing soothing strokes across her hips, her backside, her thigh, while his eyes stayed riveted to hers.

 

His blaster pistol, a modified DL-44, same as his father’s (best in the galaxy for their line of work, he’d explained) sits on his own thigh, holstered, just like hers.

 

They match, she thinks, watching him secure their targets, pushing them down in the sand— a bunch of scrap metal he’d found in the rear hold and hefted easily over his shoulder, carrying it out into the junkyard— and something about that, about their matching pistols, hers small and almost delicate-looking in comparison to his, sets her cheeks aflame.

 

She likes matching with Ben.

 

They had actually gotten some work done today, once they finally forced themselves to separate. In fact, Rey and Chewbacca have almost finished repairing the shield projectors, while Ben spent the afternoon repairing busted valves in the engineering bay. They’ve earned a break. They’ve earned some fun. Or at least, that’s what Chewbacca told them, after a few solid hours of labor.

 

Warming up with her quarterstaff to keep from staring at him while he works, as is quickly becoming her wont, Rey shifts through a few basic moves: sweeping leg attack, downward strike, stab, upward strike. A swing of the heavy metal staff above her head, then she brings it down onto the sand, squashing a gnaw-jaw that was attempting to scuttle past her unnoticed. She grins.

 

With this weapon, Rey is smooth and practiced. She feels no hesitation, no trepidation. The staff is an extension of her arms and core and legs; a part of her. It’s nice to give herself over to that for a few minutes. Nice to remind herself that though this budding thing between her and Ben sets her adrift in emotions and senses, this weapon— and the life that has led to her building it, wielding it— will keep her anchored.

 

“Impressive,” he comments, from behind her. Rey turns to find he’s finished with the targets, and has lumbered back to her. He stands outside of striking distance, his dark eyes glinting in the fading light. “Can I see it?”

 

She hands the quarterstaff over to him. It looks smaller in his massive hands, and he swings it competently enough, despite possessing none of the grace or speed that she does. And maybe she’s a little gratified by that; here is something at which she is an expert, and he is not. She smirks at him, but he merely arches an eyebrow.

 

“So,” he says, jerking his chin towards the scrap. “Time to shoot.”

 

She scoffs. “Easy.”

 

She draws the Night Sniper from its holster. Its weight in her hand is different from the quarterstaff, of course; where wielding her weapon took a certain amount of balance, an understanding of the forces of gravity and how they’d act upon a heavy metallic rod swinging through the air, the pistol asks much less of her.

 

Closing one eye, she holds her arm out straight and lines up the shot.

 

“Wait!”

 

“What?” she huffs, irritated… until he steps behind her, his legs against hers, his crotch against her bottom, his torso flush with her back. She forgets her irritation when he gently runs his hand the length of her bare arm— and maybe that’s gratuitous, but the feel of his fingers on a part of her body that is so rarely exposed makes her shudder, makes her sex throb— before he covers her pistol-bearing hand with his own.

 

“The safety,” he murmurs in her ear, depressing a small nodule on the back of the blaster with his thumb.

 

“Oh.”

 

Sheepish but determined not to show it, she bristles. “I knew that. I was just… practicing.”

 

“‘Course.” His voice is still a low rumble in her ear, and although he takes hand off of hers, he is no less distracting when he settles it on her belly, fingers fanned out, and tugs her body back into his.

 

“Relax,” he bids her. “Aim.”

 

“I _am_ aiming!”

 

“Then take the shot.”

 

“It’s—very hard to concentrate,” she protests, as he noses at her neck.

 

“Good. It’s hard to concentrate in a shoot-out, too.”

 

With another vexed little huff, Rey forces herself to ignore his hands and his lips and his body, closing an eye once more as she realigns her pistol. Deep inhale, and then… she pulls the trigger. The plasma blows a hole through the twisted bit of ceramisteel hull plating she was aiming for, dead center.

 

“Perfect,” he breathes, against her temple. His other hand lands on her hip, then creeps its way forward to rest below her breasts. “As I expected.”

 

“It _was_ pretty good, wasn’t it?”

 

She twists her neck, smirking up at him. It’s all the invitation he needs; his lips descend upon hers, and when his warm rasping tongue swipes her lips, Rey readily engages it, delighting in this new trick. There they stand, the hot day slowly sinking into night, their tongues brushing, lips pliant and searching. Still his hands hold her belly and now, one breast, now, the other— gently kneading through her thin shirt.

 

 _This is probably inappropriate,_ it occurs to her, self-consciousness spurred on by the baying of a distant happabore. With a great deal of reluctance, she pulls away.

 

“We should—” she starts, but he cuts her off.

 

“Now… make the same shot, again.”

 

He dusts a few final kisses across the line of her neck and shoulder then steps away, giving her a healthy amount of breathing room. Rey wants him back immediately, wants his hands on her, wants his lips and his tongue again. But she’d wanted to try out a blaster pistol, and that’s what he’s trying to help her do. So she allows herself only one more longing glance back at him; he’s picked up her quarterstaff again, and swings it idly as he bobs his head, encouraging. Then she turns to the scrap.

 

“Same shot,” she mutters to herself. “Easy. Like taking crickets from a Bloggin chick.”

 

An amused snort from behind her, which she ignores. One eye closed, she lines up the shot. Safety’s off, hand’s in the right position. She counts down from three in her mind, then pulls the trigger.

 

Only… something goes awry.

 

Later, much later, when she goes over every detail of their time together, second by agonizing second, she still won’t be able to discern what pulled her hand. All she knows in that moment— and all she’ll remember, in the years to follow— is that one second, she’s locked onto the hole she just blasted in the ceramisteel.

 

And the next? She’s shooting at a bit of alusteel armor to its right. A bit of armor which she hadn't realized is impenetrable by plasma bolt, something she discovers when, with a wild screech, it pings off the armor and goes flying directly towards Ben’s face.

 

It all plays out in slow motion, or so it seems: she takes the shot, a bright blue blur of plasma racing towards the shield, then returning, crackling as it whizzes past her face. And when she tries to whirl around to check on Ben, she feels like she’s moving through rapidly freezing carbonite.

 

Yet, turn she does. Her eyes land on him, and she’s shocked to see that he’s _fine_. Not a scratch on him. Both hands raised aloft in front of his heaving chest, he’s holding the quarterstaff— also built from alusteel components, she recalls, the stupor of shock making the thought sluggish and dull— and in the sand before him, there is a dark shiny spot, where the plasma has transformed it into charred glass.

 

“Kriff,” she gasps. “Ben, I’m so—”

 

“Do it again.” He’s equally breathless, but his eyes are laser focused, his face tensed with determination. “Shoot at me, this time.”

 

“What? No, you’re out of your mind! You’re lucky you’re not d—”

 

“Rey,” he says, tipping his face down to the burnt bit of sand. “That _wasn’t_ luck—I deflected the blast. Shoot me again.”

 

She swallows heavily, lifts her arm up, aiming for his chest… but her hand begins to shake. She quails, at the thought of hurting him. “Ben, please. I can’t,” she pleads.

 

“You can. Trust me.” It’s as if something has taken over him, some irresistible call that demands he answer. He doesn’t so much as blink, his dark hooded eyes boring into her. “It’ll be fine.”

 

“But I missed once!”

 

“That wasn’t you,” he tells her, sounding unshakably certain, “that was the Force.”

 

“But—”

 

“ _Trust_ me, Rey.”

 

For a full minute, she worries her lip, blaster pistol aimed at him in the semi-darkness. Finally, she sighs in defeat. “All right. If you die, I’ll never forgive you.”

 

A twitch of his lips, a solemn nod. That’s all she gets out of him. So with a final deep breath, and a quick, “I’m doing it, now!” shouted out as a warning, she pulls the trigger once more, firing directly at him.

 

Effortlessly, Ben swings the quarterstaff, once again sending the blast down into the sand. More confident in his abilities, jaw hanging, Rey shoots again— with the same result. And so she shoots again. Again, and again, and again, rapid-fire, until she’s exhausted the blaster’s cartridge. And each blast, he deflects, with only a few centimeters’ width of alusteel quarterstaff whooshing deftly through the air.

 

All around Ben, like a dark speckled nebula, are burnt patches of sand-made-glass. Still he stands unharmed, slightly winded from the effort, but otherwise unaffected.

 

Except for his eyes. They’re darker than ever, and she cannot look away; he has her captivated, frozen where she stands, a cornered skittermouse. He breathes through his nose, nostrils flared, chest rising and falling dramatically, and with slow, careful steps, he passes over the scorched glass, advancing towards her.

 

When he is so close she can feel his breath on her cheek, she manages to get out, “How—how did you do that?” Her voice is high and breathy, embarrassingly so, but she can hardly feel any shame for it, so shocked is she by whatever it is they’ve just done.

 

Gently, without answering her question, he takes the pistol from her hand, returning it to the holster on her thigh.

 

“Have you always known how to fight with a staff?” she tries to deduce, but he merely shakes his head. “Then—how?”

 

“How are you such a good shot?” he parries, eerily calm. “Have you ever used a blaster before?”

 

“Never,” she admits on a sigh, shaking with— what is this? Adrenaline? Excitement? Lust?

 

“What’s happening to us, Ben?”

 

“I think you know.”

 

She rests her hand on his chest, where his heart is hammering in double-time. “ _We’re_ doing this,” she says. “With—the Force. And last night, with the sand…”

 

“Yes,” he says, and finally the severity in his expression thaws, becoming something languid and gentle, though not any less heated. “We are. We did.”

 

“ _Ben_ ,” she cries, overwhelmed by the surreality, overcome with dueling fear and excitement. “I don’t—I don’t understand—”

 

“Okay.” She’s in his arms before she gets another word out, her quarterstaff falling forgotten to the sand with a soft thud. And then he’s shushing her, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other rubbing a calming path up and down her back. “It’s okay,” he murmurs.

 

“I don’t understand,” she repeats, feeling numb from shock, from the vast chasm of all that she doesn’t understand, which has opened up beneath her feet, even as the tears well up.

 

The light is almost gone now; wine-dark night is settling in around them. Only the lanterns at the edge of the junkyard, where the sentries have set up their vigil, and from within the _Falcon_ , keep away the shadows. Above, twinkling stars peek out through the clouds, and to the west, Jakku’s moons have begun to rise. Half of Ben’s face is obscured by the night when he pulls away, peering down at her with an inscrutable look.

 

She wonders what he’s thinking, craves understanding so fiercely it sets her teeth on edge, and like a shaft of light piercing through the darkness, she senses it: he’s afraid. And then the shaft widens, becoming a flood of light, and she sees his thoughts as though they are forming in her own mind.

 

He’s not just afraid. He’s terrified, actually, though he’s doing a good job of hiding it.

 

Rey cocks her head, listening to the jumbled stream of his thoughts. “You don’t understand, either. You’re—afraid.”

 

“You can feel that?” His voice a guttural gasp, he lowers his forehead to hers, their noses brushing. She nods. “You are too, aren’t you?” She nods again. “I feel it.” And then, after a moment: “Don’t be. Don’t be afraid.”

 

A beat. They hold each other, their breathing gradually slowing to a more normal rate.

 

“We—we’ll figure this out, Rey. Together.”

 

That unshakable certainty, again. Rey has never needed it more than she does right now; it surrounds her, cushions her, holds her like his strong arms do, and she feels her fear and shock abate.

 

“Yeah,” she agrees, pushing closer, seeking out his lips. “Okay. Together.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, after they’ve calmed each other down and then excited each other in different ways, with soft kisses and wandering hands, Ben sits in the main hold, disassembling and cleaning both blasters. Chewie is off rewiring something in the circuitry bay, and Han is busy preparing dinner for all of them, in the galley. There’s a sense of quiet, familiar routine among the crew of the _Millennium Falcon_.

 

In a hushed mumble to Ben, Rey excuses herself to the ‘fresher. He nods; she can feel his eyes on her, watching as she rises from the booth and moseys off.

 

But once out of view, she strays from the path to the ‘fresher, heading instead to the crew’s quarters, where she crawls up the bunks to dislodge the secret overhead panel. It’s easy, so easy, to pluck the postcard from the cache, folding it and tucking it inside an inner pocket in her tunic.

 

She should feel guilt at this trespass, this violation of Ben’s privacy and his trust. Have they not turned a corner this evening, with the remarkable things they were able to do? Should trust not be paramount, now? And she _does_ feel guilt at this, really, she does. But the surge of relief, of solace, of comfort, that rises within her, at keeping this secret, personal thing so close to her body— something of his, something whose value is more than credits or utility in a fight— it overrides the guilt. Overrides everything.

 

Silently, she replaces the panel, then slips back down to the deck and back out into the passageway. And when she rejoins Ben in the main hold, snuggling up to him while she watches him work, her smile is genuine. She can live with the guilt. Stealing this small piece of his past… she’s made the right choice, if not the ethical one.

 

Because in her heart, her own fear is growing, too: into the dark gaping void of all that nothing, eventually these happy golden days must go. (Nothing lasts forever on Jakku, after all.)

 

Whatever they have, no matter how special and unique it might be, no matter what promises he makes, no matter what they’ve discovered within themselves… it cannot last. Nothing can. Not on Jakku.

 

So she tucks herself into his side, letting her head fall to rest against his solid bicep, and tries not to think about the inexorable fact that the postcard and the pearl will someday soon be all she has left of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So, originally, I was going to continue writing these half-flashback/half-present day chapters until I'd told the whole story of Rey and Ben's time on Jakku. And then I decided I was going to conclude the flashbacks with one chapter, detailing the end of that time together. And then suddenly that chapter was 17k words long and counting, and I still wasn't finished— so now it is two chapters. The next one will be the last of the flashbacks, and THEN we'll be heading to Chandrila! [Sorry about that.]
> 
> That being said, anyone care for some links?
> 
> Who's [Lando Calrissian](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lando_Calrissian)?
> 
> Where is [Cloud City](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cloud_City)? [On Bespin.]
> 
> Are the dice in the cache [Han's dice](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Han%27s_dice)? [No, but they're similar. Not on a chain, though. Actual playing dice.]
> 
> What else was in the cache? A [vibroblade](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vibroblade), the [Bespin "Wish you were here" postcard](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/7e/Wish_you_were_here.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180202011804) that Rey steals, [Naboo night peals](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Naboo_night_pearl), and a [X-8 Night Sniper blaster pistol](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/X-8_Night_Sniper).
> 
> Ben carries the same heavy blaster pistol, the [DL-44](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DL-44_heavy_blaster_pistol), as Han, because... in for a penny, in for a pound, right?
> 
> What's a [gnaw-jaw](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gnaw-jaw)?
> 
> What's [ceramisteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ceramisteel), [carbonite](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Carbonite), and [alusteel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Alusteel)?
> 
> Last thing: I know I said the updates would be more frequent last chapter but then **the holidays** happened and I should've known that was an impossible goal. But the next chapter WILL be out the end of this week, promise!
> 
> Okay, that's all from me. Thank you for reading! ❤


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment. He had left the country in consequence.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**34 ABY.**

 

“We have to go off-planet again,” Han gripes, once Rey and Ben have returned from her AT-AT late the following morning; they’re lounging around under the _Falcon_ , in the flimsy plasteel folding chairs Chewbacca has retrieved from the number three hold, waiting out the worst of the day’s heat. “Damn motivator’s busted.”

 

“What’s the problem now?” Ben drawls, not bothering to open his eyes.

 

Rey, perched on his lap and slumped against his torso, still glowing with post-coital inertia after he brought her to another shivering peak in her hammock this morning— just grinding their clothed bodies together, sumptuous slow kisses and caresses being exchanged like they had all the time in the world— snacks contentedly on a jogan fruit. Feeling magnanimous, she brings a piece to Ben’s lips. He accepts it with a quirked brow, although his eyes remain shut.

 

“Energy flux,” says Han, ignoring his son’s arch tone. “Keeps bleeding back into the Quadex power core.”

 

Rey winces. “Oh, that’s no good. That’ll cause a—”

 

 _“Surge!”_ Chewbacca growls, slamming his furry fist down on the arm of his chair. It bends slightly, from the blow. _“Kriffing Gannis Ducain.”_

 

“Yeah.” Han lets out his own frustrated growl then slumps down, defeated. “No way can we jump, if we don’t replace it. Whole thing could blow, release gas into the ship.”

 

Ben chews and swallows the fruit before asking, “How long?” His eyes are open now. Fixated, he watches Rey with heated a gaze as she chews her own mouthful.

 

“Few days, tops. We’ll take a shuttle again. And—” pausing, Han leans forward, giving an exaggerated wave of his arm until he’s got Ben’s attention, “—stay with the damned ship this time, will ya? No sneaking off to Rey’s place. I mean it, kid.”

 

No. Completely unacceptable. She _needs_ Ben in her hammock with her, warming and holding her; Han is not allowed to steal any of their nights together. _Not yet,_ screams a voice in her mind. _Not yet, not yet._ Rey scowls, narrowing her eyes at Han.

 

“Why?” she demands, sitting up straight.

 

 _“We don’t trust Plutt,”_ Chewie informs her. _“He’s a two-timer_ — _he’ll steal this ship back in an instant, if we give him the chance.”_

 

“It’ll be _fine_!” Rey objects, somewhat shrilly. “You don’t have to worry about Plutt—I can handle him.”

 

“Not if you two are shacking up halfway across the planet, you can’t.”

 

Han’s words have a ring of finality and he crosses his arms, challenging her to push back. But she knows— despite how begrudging that knowledge is, how furious it makes her— that he’s right. So she resumes her reclining against Ben, who welcomes her back with a big hand rested gently on her hip. All the joviality and comfort of the morning has dissipated; he looks as irritated and indignant as she feels.

 

“Not fair,” she says, sulking. Ben nods his agreement.

 

 _“That’s life,”_ comes Chewie’s less-than-sympathetic reply.

 

And that, as they say, is that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And so it is jealously that they hoard their hours together that evening, after Han and Chewbacca have eaten and departed. They play dejarik for a while, but grow distracted quickly, Rey in Ben’s lap, guiding each other through the storm.

 

But soon, all too soon, the night has grown late.

 

“Stay,” he pleads, hands clenching around her hips. “Just stay, Rey.”

 

“I can’t.”

 

“That’s not true.”

 

It’s not, really. She could stay. She could. R’iia knows, she wants more than anything else to stay. But there is that thought, like the needle of a Tentacle-cactus, lodged in her mind: _what if they come back? What if tonight’s the night? What if they can’t find me?_

 

And then the competing thought, clashing against it: _not yet, not yet._

 

Ben’s eyes, heavy-lidded and beseeching, stare up at her. It would be so easy to stay, it would feel so right. Mashra’s warning returns to her, that bracing dose of reality, and Rey knows. She can pretend all she wants that she doesn’t but she _does_.

 

She must be careful.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, soft and sincere.

 

The worst part is, he dejectedly accepts that without further argument. Helps her into her jacket, holds her hand as they head out into the night, even keeps hold of it as she shoves one foot onto her speeder’s pedal. Never in her life has she needed assistance in mounting her speeder; she built the damned thing, for edge’s sake. But the gesture— like his helping to tighten the blaster holster the day before, like his sharing food and his bunk and his family with her, like all the small thoughtful things he does— breaks her heart, so she leans her weight on him while she swings her leg over the body of the speeder and settles into its seat.

 

“Good night, Ben Solo,” she whispers, lilting sideways to press her lips to his. He catches her there, in a regretful kiss.

 

And then he lets her go, with an equally hushed, “Goodnight, Rey of Jakku.”

 

She thinks that’ll be it; dons her goggles and cowl, ignites the engine. But just as she’s leaning forward, bracing herself for the initial jerk her speeder always gives when starting, she hears him call, still hushed:

 

“Come back tomorrow?”

 

“Of course!” she shouts, into the dark. Then— before she can change her mind, climb off the speeder, hurry back into his arms— she shoves her foot down on the pedal, hard, and away she goes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The night is long and sleepless, no matter how many times she buries her hand in her underwear and rubs away at herself. Her mind churns with thoughts of Ben: the seven days they have spent together, what they have done, the way he looks and smells, the miraculous changes he has awoken within her.

 

And when morning finally dawns, it is on an irritable, exhausted Rey who grumbles as she dons her clothing and climbs onto her speeder. Yet that gloom melts away when she spies him across the junkyard: sitting at the bottom of the _Falcon_ ’s ventral ramp, booted feet planted in the sand, holding what looks to be a mug of caf in one hand, and a cluster of something red she can’t identify in the other.

 

Nightbloomers, she realizes, once she dismounts and marches towards him. An entire bouquet of them, dusty crimson blooms, a little faded in the stark light of day, but lovely nonetheless. They look almost comical, sprouting up from his giant trembling fist.

 

“Good morning, Ben Solo,” she sighs, offering him a shy smile.

 

He hasn’t slept well either. She can see it in the shadows beneath his eyes, in the tired way he hunches in on himself. The smile he returns is also shy; it’s almost like they’re starting over.

 

Shy, but keen. Shy, but full of craving. Shy, but intent… Not _quite_ starting over, then.

 

Nearer and nearer she approaches, not stopping until she’s dropped herself into his lap. And every vein in her body thrums, dizzy with relief, when his arms come up around her and he buries his face in her neck.

 

“Are these for me?” she asks, low, in his oversized ear. Teasingly, she runs a finger along the thin cartilage edge; with her free hand, she reaches for the flowers.

 

“Mmhm,” he hums, and lets her take them. “Found them this morning.”

 

“You’re lucky, you know. These are nightbloomers—they grow near the Sinking Fields,” she says, thrilling when he pulls her closer, bringing his lips to the hollow of her throat. “You could’ve been swallowed whole by the sands, walking out there.”

 

So faint it’s more breathed than spoken, she hears: “Worth it.”

 

A serene lull ensues; Rey is draped over him, Ben mouths at the underside of her jaw, hungry but tender, so tender. Their connection has held through the night, if anything, absence has made the heart grow fonder, but… how much longer do they really have? Rey worries at the thought like a scabbed-over wound until he discovers a spot behind her ear that whites out her mind before filling it with other, more salient ideas.

 

Apparently, she’s going to have to be the voice of reason here.

 

“We should—” she drags in a ragged breath, pushing on his shoulders until she dislodges him, “—shouldn’t we get to work?”

 

“No rush.” The words are a teasing reminder of her own from the other day, hummed against her cheek.

 

“Ben—”

 

“Let’s go for a ride,” he cuts in, and juts his chin towards her speeder. “Show me the sights of Jakku.”

 

“Really?”

 

Pursing her lips, she throws her head back to study the underbelly of the _Falcon_. The shield projectors are all repaired, at least. As are the damaged, burnt bits of the hull. The canon lasers look good. Someone has even cleaned the viewports between yesterday and this morning. The work isn’t finished, but… decent progress has been made.

 

 _But they can’t leave yet,_ laments a small part of Rey. _Not yet. Not yet._

 

He gives the slightest lift of his shoulders. “Why not?”

 

“You’ll never get off of Jakku, at the rate we’re working,” she hints, pensive, watching him closely.

 

He stands, easing her onto her feet. Arms still around her, holding her in a tight hug, he says, “Hm. Unfortunate.”

 

“Or intentional?” She barely dares to hope, waiting with held breath for his reply. Everything, it seems, hangs in the balance.

 

Tilting his head, his eyes crinkle at their outer edges, and he gives her that faint trace of a smile. Nothing else. That smiles says: _you already know the answer to that._

 

It takes no more than a second before she cracks, hearing herself blurt out a shivery, “Okay.” His smile blooms in earnest now, like the flowers in her hand under the silvery light of Jakku’s moons. His cheeks crease, two valleys bordering his mouth; his teeth are big and white, but not straight. His small eyes become smaller, squinting, yet they shine, dark and deep, contented. It’s a lovely smile, boyish almost, and Rey feels compelled to return it.

 

“Okay,” she says again, nodding to bolster her own confidence in her decision. “Let’s go for a ride.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

That’s just what they do. For hours, they zip across the barren surface of Jakku. So long do they ride that eventually, they must stop at Blowback Town, way out beyond the badlands, to re-fuel. Ben purchases some ice-cold drinking water for them while they wait for the mole-like Blarina attendant to fill Rey’s speeder engines with the liquid tradium needed to power them.

 

When the attendant is finished, he pays for everything, the tradium and the water, though neither are cheap on Jakku. She tries to object, but is silenced with a steely look from him, and an obstinate shake of his head.

 

They continue on. She takes him past the elevated plain of the Plaintive Hand plateau and the shadowy Valley of the Eremite, the sun-baked Pilgrim’s Road and Old Meru’s tent village, the sackcloth flaps of its many-colored tents fluttering in the wind; all of them are places where the monks and their acolytes dwell, worshiping the Force. He studies them without comment, just tilts his shrouded head and nods at each. Then they pass the jagged peaks of the Fallen Teeth and Kelvin Ravine and Ridge, then the Sko'rraq Mountains and finally, what little there is that constitutes Cratertown— monuments both natural and constructed. All the places she has spent her life whizzing by, hardly ever giving them a second thought.

 

As she points them out to Ben, she feels giddy; he’s distracting, in the best possible way. His hands are flattened against her belly, their thighs pressed flush together, his hulking torso curled around hers. Rey shouts back bits of information, and he nods his comprehension, nose tickling the back of her neck.

 

This place is her home, but it has never been as beautiful as it is today. Everything seems… brighter. Sharper. The whole world has been thrown into vivid relief; even the air she pulls into her lungs, in short shallow breaths, drenched in the subtle smell of him, tastes different.

 

Finally, she brings the speeder to a halt, right in the middle of the Crackle. For kilometers in every direction, the desert— once sand, now smooth blackened glass— shines almost painfully bright under the glaring afternoon sun.

 

The heat is unbearable, so they don’t linger, only staying long enough to brush up on the history of this place: that final decisive battle between the Empire and the Rebellion, and the Empire’s fall, both literal and metaphorical, in its wake. He shrugs off questions about his parents’ role in the affair, and Rey does not press.

 

The amber in which she is storing these moments must not be shattered. What they have must be hoarded, for as long as they can manage. So they agree to seek shelter inside the _Ravager_ , to wait out the midday heat, and drop their discussion of wars, past or present.

 

“We could do some salvaging,” Rey suggests, parking the speeder within the main docking bay of the gargantuan _Executor_ -class Dreadnought. Though she speaks quietly, pulling off her cowl and goggles as Ben does the same, her words carry throughout the cavernous hangar. She flinches at the echoes, lowering her voice to a murmur to add, “There’s plenty of valuable stuff in here.”

 

“We _could_ do that,” Ben agrees, face upturned, studying the massive space. “Or… we could try something.”

 

She frowns. “Try what?”

 

“Don’t you want to understand what this is?” Ben shifts to stare down at her, looking focused. Resolved. Resigned. “Between us? And—the Force?”

 

She blinks up at him, taken aback. He’s waiting for an answer, and he deserves one. But Rey is lost in his eyes, lost in the way he looks at her, lost in the reflection of herself she finds in their dark depths. She reaches out for him, as she has before— with her senses, her mind and her soul— and when she finds him, she feels it, as she did the other night: fear. But it’s edged with something else, something urgent.

 

Something that suggests he has not been entirely forthcoming about his connection to the Force. A secret, locked away. Rey pushes that aside; he’s still waiting.

 

“Yes,” she says at last, borrowing his resolve to shore up her own concerns, attempting— clumsily, not knowing if he can even feel her— to settle his nerves, in return. He breathes in deeply, nostrils flared, and cups her cheek with his hand.

 

“Thank you,” he sighs, bringing his forehead down to hers.

 

So it’s worked, then. Maybe. He _feels_ calmer anyway, and Rey drinks in that calm as much as she can, then presses her lips to his. Another mysterious amount of time is lost, discounted, as they reassure each other through this uncanny connection and through the far more understandable medium of affectionate touches, murmuring kisses.

 

When he breaks away from her, he nods, then gestures to a rusted out TIE fighter, absent one wing and missing all nine panels of its geodesic central viewport. It sits lopsided before them, a hobbled beast.

 

“We’re going to lift that,” he tells her.

 

More confused blinking. She regards the starfighter, mentally calculating how much it must weigh. One ton? Two? More?

 

“Together?” she asks, peering up at him.

 

“Yes.” His voice wobbles, ever so slightly. “Together. That’s—the right way for us to do it.”

 

She takes a deep, steadying breath. “Oh—kay.”

 

“Look at it—memorize it,” he instructs. She's tempted to ask what makes him the expert, but he does have something of an advantage over her; after all, his uncle _is_ Luke Skywalker.

 

So, “Got it,” is her only response, as she commits to memory its battered shape.

 

“Close your eyes.”

 

He’s standing behind her, not touching but close enough that she can feel the heat pouring off his body. In her mind’s eye, she imagines him taking two steps forward, bringing them into contact, everywhere. She licks her lips and tries to focus.

 

“Are they closed?”

 

“Does it really matter?” she wonders.

 

An indignant huff, and a resultant puff of warm air against the exposed nape of her neck. “It does. Are they?”

 

“Yes.” She rolls her eyes before closing them obediently. “Are yours?” He hums in the affirmative, and she presses, “But why?”

 

“Concentration. Focus.” His voice turns sheepish as he continues: “That’s—the only thing I remember. From my uncle’s dinnertime lectures on the Force.”

 

“I’m _plenty_ focused,” she insists. “So… now what?”

 

“Think… about… lifting it?”

 

It’s meant to be a statement, she can tell, but his voice lifts up at the end. Rey has to smile; he’s trying so hard to sound authoritative and assured. She wants to tell him to scrap this whole thing and come here, into her waiting arms. She even goes so far as to glance back at him.

 

Eyes closed, brows furrowed, he’s reaching forward, towards the TIE fighter. So she turns her focus back to it and does the same, pulling at the energy humming in the air, the dynamic charge that’s run through her all her life. The energy of Jakku. No, beyond that. The energy of the cosmos. She gathers it to herself. And then, she does her best to wield it.

 

For a moment, nothing happens.

 

Then there is a harsh metallic groaning, like the steelpecker’s cry but louder. Durasteel and transparisteel, protesting bolts and nuts, beams and panels, all beginning to shift and move, all at once. Their strength has not been tested in many years, they have not been moved since the _Ravager_ plummeted to the sands and settled here.

 

But, oh, are they moving now.

 

Excitement kicks at her belly. “I’m opening my eyes,” she tells him.

 

“Good,” he rasps. “You should see this.”

 

She cannot contain her shocked gasp when she opens her eyes and beholds what they've done. Though she knew what she’d see, she is not prepared for the actual _sight_ of it: the TIE fighter hovers a full three meters above the hangar deck. No noise emanates from its thrusters, nor are any of its running lights shining; it’s not operational. There’s not a doubt in her mind… she and Ben have done this. Are doing this.

 

“Ben!” she shouts.

 

“Yes,” comes his response, steadier now than it was a moment ago. “Focus. Bring it towards us.”

 

She does. But something happens, even as it begins to drift forward; she feels Ben in the Force, a brilliant presence, warm and radiant. And yet— that light is being eclipsed. Blotted out, bit by bit, by a kind of darkness.

 

“We’re doing this!” she cries, never tearing her eyes from the hovering TIE.

 

“The Force,” he mutters, as if that explains anything. “We’re—using the Force.”

 

His deep voice rumbles with awe and something else, something that sounds to Rey’s ears like panic and fascination, intertwined. _The panic,_ she realizes. That’s what is blotting out the light.

 

His fear.

 

“Ben?”

 

The TIE is poised almost directly over their heads now.

 

“We’re going to put it down,” he directs her. “Ready?”

 

“I don’t know!” she yelps. The panic has spread to her, his fear— she can feel it, inside her, like ink diffusing through water, muddying her mind— it blocks her judgement, cuts off the feeling of well-being that warmed her only moments earlier. Blocks off everything, even the warm flow of the Force. “Ben?”

 

“Shh,” he hushes, reaching for her, a hand on her shoulder.

 

With a groan, the TIE fighter is sent hurtling away from them, colliding thunderously with the far wall of the hangar before screeching as it tumbles down to the deck. There it goes still, and silent.

 

“Ben,” she says again, shaking, then again: “Ben?” Tears have blurred her vision, and breathing is difficult. All she feels is his fear… each wave of it only stokes her own. “What… happened?”

 

“I’m here.” And he is, the hand on her shoulder becoming strong arms enveloping her, pressing her face against his chest, holding her so tightly it steals her breath away. “You’re safe.”

 

“You’re so _afraid_!” she wails, tears spilling over.

 

“Yes.” His response is muted; he sounds numb, although Rey can still taste the acrid surge of his fear in her own mouth. “Yes, I am.” When she unearths her face from his shirt, the dingy white cotton has become dark and damp with her tears; she looks up at him, searching his mournful expression.

 

“All the time,” he adds, for good measure.

 

She opens her mouth to say something, not yet knowing what that something will be. What can she even offer? Reassurance perhaps, or a promise of understanding. She sniffles. Gently, Ben runs the pad of his thumb over one tear-stained cheek.

 

But another sound interrupts the moment; the hiss of a door opening, somewhere. Then: the guttural shriek of dangerous skeletal predators, the Uthuthma, pierces through the silence of the hangar. Rey scans the space wildly, searching for its source; when she swings her eyes up towards the shadowy gloom of the upper-level walkways, she sees them: three Uthuthma, red eyes glowing, white jawbones clacking angrily as they search the hangar for the cause of Rey and Ben’s noisy disruption.

 

“What the…?” he trails off, also staring up at them.

 

This time, her fear is her own. The Uthuthma are no joke; they’re lethally swift in hand-to-hand combat, and they adhere to the policy of ‘shoot first, question later.’ There’s a vast distance of hangar between them, but they could close it easily enough— the fall to the hangar floor would not kill them. Not much will, besides a blast to the brain.

 

“Come on,” she hisses. His hand clutched in hers, she dodges for shelter behind a nearby TIE interceptor. “We need to get out of their line of sight!”

 

Leaning against the pincer-like wing of the interceptor, he searches the hangar before muttering: “The bomber.”

 

Rey follows the path of his pointed finger; there’s a broken down TIE bomber about twenty meters away, with tri-paneled wings tattered by scorched holes. Squinting through the gloom, she can make out a tear in the hull of one of the two barrels that comprise its body. Hiding within that barrel— a passenger pod, she suspects— is a decent choice, if they're about to be in a shootout.

 

Ben glances at her. “See it?”

 

“It’ll do!”

 

With that, she sets off, darting towards another interceptor that sits between them and the bomber. She can hear Ben’s heavy breathing, the thudding footfalls of his boots behind her.

 

The shrill rattling cries of the Uthuthma grow more enraged, and then… the shooting begins. Plasma flies fast and furious, whizzing past them in lethal streaks of screaming blue as they continue scurrying between starfighters, making their way to the hopefully reinforced bomber.

 

Rey hears Ben’s snarled shout right before she feels a sudden shove against her right shoulder, which sends her toppling behind a TIE fighter’s hexagonal wing. She catches herself before her jaw hits the deck, and whirls around in a crouch, ready to bite Ben’s head off for his ill-timed impertinence.

 

Except he’s standing out in the open, unholstering his blaster. The sleeve of his pistol arm is singed and there's a burned gash visible underneath; he’s been shot, although the wound isn’t bleeding much. Carefully, heedless of his wound, he takes aim, ignoring the hail of projectiles that rain down on him. In an instant, Rey sees how she can help; she thrusts one arm out towards him, focusing with all her might and all of her fledgling connection to the Force, and just like that— all of them freeze in the air, somewhere between the Uthuthma’s blasters and Ben’s body. Crackling, volatile bolts of ion blue, they stutter and shiver, but her grasp on them holds. They come no closer to Ben or herself.

 

Rey gasps. She’s doing that; she’s stopping them. Without Ben.

 

Taking his time, especially now that their blasters are no threat— with each new pulse fired, Rey extends her grasp, freezing the bolt mid-trajectory just as she has its brethren— he raises his blaster in the air, closes his eyes, and shoots.

 

Three Uthuthma, three shots. Rey hears the rattle of their osseous bodies collapsing to the durasteel deck high above their heads, followed by utter silence. And then Ben turns, making his way to her.

 

She releases the volatile rays she’s held suspended in the air, now that he is clear of them. As if nothing has interrupted them, they continue on their paths; striking the deck, they singe it before burning out in a series of harmless glowing fizzles.

 

Rey’s bones feel heavy, her limbs unwieldy. How strange this whole day has been, how little sleep she got last night. Everything is over-bright, deafening, too real and yet not real at all. What has she just done? Who is Ben, anyway? How is any of this possible?

 

She wants nothing more than to lie down and rest. As he draws closer, she peers up at him, her lip wobbling. _Take me away from here,_ she wants to say. _Please don’t ever leave,_ she wants to say. _I’m so tired—I’ve grown addicted to sleeping in your arms and I’m afraid of what will happen to me when you go,_ she wants to say.

 

 _What are_ you _so afraid of?_ she wants to say.

 

But she doesn't speak. Ben doesn’t, either. As if she weighs nothing, he picks her up— one arm under her knees, the other across her back, so she cannot help throwing her arms around his thick neck— and carries her like a bride. With a dozen more steps, he brings them to the TIE bomber.

 

There, under the hole in the hull, he puts her down just long enough to lace his fingers together, making a basket, then indicates she should place her foot inside it. Easily, so easily, he vaults her up and over the hole’s jagged edge. Seemingly jumping the several meters up into the ship without any trouble, he follows nimbly. His nimbleness is confusing; unexpected, for a man so bulky. Like she’s a cotton-stuffed ragdoll, he pulls her deeper into the cabin, away from the opening, then plucks the glowrod from her satchel, setting it before them and activating it. Rey allows this, more than happy to let him make the choices while she works her way back from numb shock.

 

He settles them both against the small galley built into one side of the hull. Across the cabin are six bunks, built into the opposite hull. At the far end is a door that presumably leads to a ‘fresher, and to either side of the hole in the hull, there are various compartments.

 

They’re out of sight. Safe, supposedly. Not that it matters, now. Rey tries not to think about the dead Uthuthma bodies lying out on that overhang in the hangar. The Vworkkas will begin to pick at them for their marrow, soon enough.

 

“Ben,” she starts, with a hesitant glance his way. His jaw ticks rapidly, as does a muscle beneath his left eye. But he remains silent, waiting for her. “What happened out there…” her voice fades away to nothing; in her uncertainty, she flounders.

 

A minutes passes, then another.

 

Finally, he sighs. “A mistake. I never wanted this. The Force—” his eyes drift down to his hands, which are clenched into fists atop his bended knees, “—Leia Organa, the Skywalkers, my—family—” again he halts, and this time, he does not finish that thought. Whatever he’s trying to get out, he can’t quite seem to find the words. Just like her.

 

Rey rests her head against his shoulder. Another sigh follows, buried in a kiss against her hair, which is damp with cooled sweat, left over from the heat and that sickening surge of his fear.

 

“We don’t need this,” he states. Rey doesn’t know what he means, but she gets the feeling he’s not speaking to her. Maybe he sees her incomprehension, because he clarifies: “We don’t need the Force.”

 

There’s so much feeling behind the declaration, so much resolve. Like this is something he decided long ago, and it has become an inviolable mandate in his life.

 

 _You don’t need the Force,_ she wants to say, _or_ _you don’t_ want _to need it?_

 

His lips are on hers, hot and fierce and demanding, before she can give voice to the thought.

 

“Rey,” he groans, a prayer uttered between kisses. He gathers her to him, pulling her into his lap. She goes easily, sitting astride him, holding onto his neck like a lifeline. “Rey. Rey. _Rey_.”

 

She craves this just as much as he does; whimpering into his mouth, she licks back at his tongue, kissing him like her life depends on it. Like this is the first time, or maybe the last. Before she knows it, he’s pushing himself up the wall, one large hand supporting her bottom, palming it, and the other pressed against her spine to keep her body fixed to his.

 

Shuffling, he brings them to a bunk, stopping only to pull off the dusty top blanket before he gingerly deposits her on the sheets. He crawls in after her, over one leg, planting himself between her thighs. She’s prepared for him to kiss her again— wants it, needs it— but he pulls away, then rises to his knees.

 

“Ben.” Her own voice is just as much a groan, strained and throaty. Her arms are still raised, reaching for him, but he does not accede to her. He just _looks_ , lips parted, chest rising and falling erratically.

 

“Rey,” he repeats, faint. Solemn. His fingers dance over the hem of her undershirt. “Take all of this off.” A sharp breath sucked in, his lips pursing and unpursing. Then:

 

“Please.”

 

For an instant, only an instant, she wavers. A faint echo of Mashra’s warning jangles in her ears— or maybe that is just the pounding of her own heart. Either way, she reminds herself that she _does_ want him to see her, just like she wants to see him. In fact, that’s all she’s wanted from him from the moment she first laid eyes on him, cool and calm and collected as his father raged at Constable Zuvio. She’s just wanted _his_ eyes on _her_ , _his_ attention on _her_. Her fascination, reciprocated; that’s all she wants. The time has passed for words and doubts, hasn’t it?

 

How much time do they even have left?

 

Hastily, she yanks off the satchel she has strapped across her body, then her belt. The linen she’s draped across and around her shoulders goes next, followed by her cotton undershirt; all are dropped heedlessly to the deck. Finally, she tugs loose the length of linen that serves to bind her breasts. Looking down at them— paltry, pale as sun-bleached bone compared to the freckled golden hue of her shoulders and cheeks, mauve nipples pebbled into peaks in the cool musty air— Rey is struck by self-consciousness.

 

What if he doesn’t like them? Or any of her, for that matter? For all the time he’s spent admiring her through her clothes, perhaps he’ll be disappointed with stark reality. She’s thin bordering on gaunt; there is very little, to her eyes, that is soft or sweet about her body. Feeling more like a sharply honed weapon than a woman, she crosses her arms over her chest, then looks up.

 

Ben is gawking at her, jaw hanging. While she was preoccupied with stripping, he has also disrobed. Gone are his vest, shirt, and blaster holster. Exposed for her own greedy perusal is a wide, powerful torso, just as pale as hers, though under his skin are well-fed stores of muscle and fat. That muscle is not sharply defined or sinewy the way hers is, but neither is there anything wasteful about his form. He’s just healthy— strong, and thick.

 

Stretched across his right flank, and up by his shoulder, and along his arms, are patches and slashes of shiny gnarled skin. Silvery lavender scars, no doubt received during illicit ‘business’ transactions gone wrong. What will soon be his newest one, on his right bicep, is still red and raw, although it’s very superficial, hardly even bleeding. His big hands linger on the opened fastenings of his trousers, but they’ve stilled; he is completely enraptured, she deduces, by her breasts, shielded though they are.

 

Breathing heavily, they regard each other for several fraught moments.

 

Rey licks her lips, a nervous habit. It breaks the spell. Carefully, Ben lowers himself down to his elbows, then rests his chin on her tensed abdomen, just above her navel.

 

“Let me see,” he says, a plea and a demand.

 

How can she deny him anything, when he’s looking at her like that? His hands land on her trouser-clad hips and slide upwards, tickling her as they smooth over her trim waist, the lower rungs of her ribcage. Two thumbs brush her forearms, beseeching she grant him access. So she does, slowly moving her arms out of the way, clasping his shoulders.

 

A murmured, “Beautiful,” and then he is surging forward, planting a lingering kiss on her bony sternum, between her breasts. Rey buries her fingers in his thick dark hair, squirming happily when he shifts his head to nuzzle the inside of her right breast, then her left.

 

Again: “Beautiful.”

 

“Really?”

 

It’s not that she doesn’t believe him; he’s completely sincere in his admiration, she can tell. And she can feel it, through their connection. His lust, his desire— throbbing and intense, making her a slick mess. It’s just… she wants to hear him say it. Wants to be seen. Wants to be admired, out loud.

 

Wants to make this _count_.

 

“Yes,” he answers, sighing.

 

He works his way up the barely-there swell with his lips until he reaches her nipple, then teases with kisses around the areola. And when he takes it in his mouth, so perfect is the sensation— wet but warm pressure, and a clever tongue that toys with the bud— that she almost bucks him off her.

 

She manages not to, though, instead hissing, “Kriff. Oh, Ben—”

 

“Hmm,” is his reply, hummed against her sensitive skin as he turns to the other nipple, applying the same attention. She can feel his fingers fumble against the front of her trousers, searching for their fastening. In the time it takes for him to kiss a soft trail back to her lips, she decides to take mercy on him; grabbing at his right hand, she leads him to the leather laces at her spine.

 

They make quick work of her trousers and underwear after that, with Ben’s deft fingers tugging, and Rey assisting by planting her feet and pushing her hips up towards him. Once she is bared to him, Ben seems to forget about his own trousers. He leans down, on his knees in a worshipful position, to bestow one kiss on each of her sharp jutting hip bones.

 

She could cry, at his tenderness.

 

His attentions wander lower; he eschews the dark, damp thatch of hair between her legs, instead bringing his lips to the sensitive skin of her thighs. Each one receives a line of soft kisses.

 

“Be-en,” she warbles. Never in her life— that she can remember— has she been so vulnerable as she is right this second.

 

And it’s okay, because it’s him. Because he asked her to trust him, and she does. But she still needs to see his eyes, needs to hear his voice.

 

“M’right here, sweetheart,” he mumbles, flicking his pitch-black eyes up at her. “Going to kiss you—here.” He brings one of her thighs up to lay over his shoulder while he speaks, opening her further to him. Rey whimpers a little, embarrassed by the wet sound that seems deafening in the quiet passenger pod when he strokes one finger through her exposed lips. “That okay?” he asks, brow creasing as he studies her reaction.

 

She licks her dry lips, pants out a huffed, “Yes,” and watches him lowers his lips to hers.

 

And then, R’iia, and then. He does exactly what he’s said he will, and gives her a kiss, possibly her favorite of all the kisses he’s given her so far. The feel of his lips against her— gentle, teasing for a moment before he groans faintly and his tongue sneaks out and swipes a long path up her sex, before his groan turns feral, his mouth hungrily devouring her— Rey throws one arm over her eyes, overcome and unable to look any longer.

 

The other hand, she brings down to his, which cradles her behind. Eagerly, he twines their fingers against the subtle flare of her hip. It helps a bit to alleviate some of her bashfulness, holding his hand like that. Ben continues on, his prominent nose nudging that sensitive, throbbing bundle of nerves at the apex of her sex, his throat producing the kind of appreciative noises a starved man might upon being fed a feast, leaving no part of her undiscovered by his lips and his tongue before he focuses on that throbbing nub, sucking hard.

 

It makes her whole body go taut, trembling.

 

When she gathers the nerve to remove her arm— just a bit, just enough to steal a peek down at him— he grins against her, probing with one thick finger the place she’s barely dared to touch herself, except to dam with strips of sackcloth during her irregular bleeds. His touch doesn’t feel the same as when she does it; Rey finds herself getting wetter the more he teases, gently working a finger up into that narrow, secret part of her.

 

She cries out, a soft husky whine, and pushes her hips up, closer to him.

 

“Like that?” he gasps, coming up for air. Still his finger explores her, and his thumb fills in for his errant mouth, rubbing that tiny scrap of flesh that brings about the storm. Quickly, it’s all happening so quickly. And yet it’s just right. Just what she would’ve asked for, if she had the capacity for speech right now.

 

But all she can do is hum softly, and rub up against him. Ben lets out something that is extraordinarily like a laugh, and eases her other thigh up onto his other shoulder.

 

Then he dives back in.

 

He continues to suck and lick, tease and devour; the storm rises and falls within her, sweeping her away for a few blissfully electric moments during which she uses his hair as her reins, steering them both while she trembles and shouts her way through it. For a time, it's like a feedback loop across the bond they share; her throbbing pleasure fuels his, then his redoubles that, sending her higher still. Finally, her body begins to calm. His face re-emerges from between her legs, slick-shiny and wet. He wears an expression she’s never quite seen on him before: something between smug satisfaction and the kind of awe exhibited in the face of a natural wonder.

 

He eases her legs back down to the mattress, then pushes himself up her body until she is covered by him. He’s so broad that Rey imagines if someone were to climb up into the passenger pod right now, she would be entirely obscured by his torso. That makes her feel safe; it makes this— what they’re doing right now— feel safe, too.

 

Ben leans out of the bunk long enough to pick up his shirt and wipe his cheeks dry; then he descends upon her, catching her in a demanding kiss, opening her up to him at once. Rey thinks she can taste something tangy, maybe herself, on his tongue.

 

“That was—” he sighs, when she pushes him back, needing air, “incredible. You taste…”

 

Instead of finishing that thought, he cranes his neck, returning his lips to hers with a moan that Rey can feel vibrating in his chest, pressed as it is against her own.

 

“Better than the Twi’lek?” she asks, self-conscious and cringing as soon as the words are spoken. Was that too obvious? Too needy? Too jealous?

 

“Just different, sweetheart,” he says, soothing. “That—wasn’t this. You and me, it’s something different.”

 

“Did it taste… did I taste…”

 

“Incredible,” he repeats. “C’mere.”

 

There is more kissing after that, soft and sweet and just on the cusp of loving, and yes, there is a part of Rey that is tempted to ask if it _is_ loving, if this is love, just as there is a part of her that is tempted to ask how he shot those Uthuthma without looking, how she froze the plasma bolts, how is any of this possible, and most of all—

 

What does it mean for them?

 

But the kissing. There’s no room for thoughts of all that, when they’re kissing like this. It’s good, lewd but reverent, elemental. Their bodies are entwined, finally, nothing between them but Ben’s trousers— which have slipped down to his thighs. She throws her arms around his neck to keep him close, his hands clutch her behind, kneading what meager offerings she has back there.

 

Feeling bold, relaxed, needing to explore him like he did her, she reaches down and takes the thick root of him in her hand. It’s not the first male organ she’s seen; some alien, one Human, all have been flashed at her by some drunk salvager. All were flaccid and uninspiring and unsolicited. There was nothing sensual about them, nothing beautiful. Nothing like Ben.

 

It’s hot, like all his body is— she’s beginning to sweat, trapped beneath him, although she has no complaints to register on that particular issue— and soft. Well, the skin is soft, the thing itself is… quite hard. And a bit twitchy, like a living thing.

 

“Rey,” he wheezes, a man besotted. “Stroke—move your hand. Up and down, slow.”

 

Holding him in a loose fist, reveling in the feel of his silky skin and the way he’s staring at her like she will decide the fate of his entire future, she does as he’s asked.

 

“Your— _your_ hand on _my_ cock…” he doesn’t finish that thought right away; crushing her to him, her hand trapped between them as she continues to pull on— his cock, she thinks, that’s what it’s called, of course, she’s heard that word in passing at the outpost though she never paid it any mind— he kisses her, grunting bestially into her mouth when she passes her thumb over the hole on the glans, smearing the thick pale fluid she finds beaded there.

 

“So small…”

 

“Maybe you’re just big,” she croons at him, with a smirk. Now she understands his smug satisfaction from before, watching him grunt and whine just from her hand wrapped around his cock, just from the slow passes of her fist up and down its length, just from a few teasing strokes against the underside of the flared head. Rey could get used to this.

 

Curious about his noticeable size now that she's remarked upon it, she brings his cock between her legs with a slight tug; eager to give her what she wants, Ben drops his weight down onto her.

 

He rolls his hips and his cock nestles between her folds, just moving along them, not advancing. The sensation is divine; Rey thought that after the storm, she’d be finished, but the longer he works at it, just rubbing their sexes together, the closer she feels to that messy upheaval again. Another round, another storm.

 

 _More, more, more,_ crows her heart.

 

She digs her fingertips into the shifting terrain of his strong back— she has no nails to claw him with, she must keep them clipped to cut down on the grime they accumulate— but she tenses her fingers anyway, dragging them across the bunched muscles she finds there.

 

“Rey,” he pants, for the hundredth time, or maybe the hundred thousandth, she doesn’t know and she doesn’t care. He sounds needy. Desperate.

 

Something happens then, something that changes everything in an instant. Her hips shift, or his do, or they both of them move together, seeking out something subconsciously, at just the right time and just the right angle. And that wide flared tip of his cock, whose size she appreciated with her own hand only moments ago, is suddenly pressing forward into her. The pressure is immense, but it feels _right_. He’s kissing her, lush lips against hers— she can feel his breath hitch, just from that initial entry, the way her body gives way for him— and Rey wants this, she wants him inside, all of him, where he belongs. She wants to be his home, his true North, his sun and his moon, but then—

 

_That’s how women end up with children they can’t feed. Is that what you want? A babe?_

 

“No!” she yelps, panicked. “Not inside!”

 

Fear. All Rey’s this time, although just as his carnality has been feeding hers, now her fear spreads to him, then back to her— an instantaneous echo chamber of emotion swirling between them like a vicious cyclone. And at once, the pressure is gone.

 

Ben recoils as though burned, rearing up on his haunches, and his cock— flushed red and rigid, wet, from her— bobs tragicomically in response. His face is stricken. That pale face has been flushed with ardor, ardor for _her_ , but now it’s blanched of all color, haunted, as he attempts— awkwardly, the trousers binding him at the knees making his movements ungainly— to shuffle backwards, away from her.

 

“I’m—sor—Rey, I—” he sputters.

 

The fear rises to a fever pitch, wild panic bouncing between them, and with each pass, growing more intense, more devastating. What troubles her more right now— that she might have fallen pregnant, or that she might have driven him away?

 

There’s no time to ponder. He’s off the bed, trying to tuck himself away in his trousers, pulled back up around his hips. He stumbles back towards the ‘fresher door. “I’ll just…” she hears, muttered, as he turns and begins to jab at the keys on the control panel. “I’m… uh…”

 

But he can’t bring himself to finish any of his thoughts. He’s mortified. Revulsion with himself, for possibly hurting her, is making him nauseous. Rey can feel it all.

 

“Wait,” she manages to get out. Just as fear made her stop him, fear makes her fling herself out of the bed, hurtling across the pod and plastering herself to his back. “I’m sorry—come back,” she keens, into the tough skin of his shoulder blade. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

 

“I’m just—the… ‘fresher…” he trails off, resorting to pounding on the smooth surface of the door. But it’s locked, and makes no acknowledgment of his efforts. Sucking in a deep breath, he raises his hand, preparing to open it with the Force. Rey can sense the corresponding wobble and flux of energy in the air around them.

 

“Stop, Ben,” she whispers. Her hand on his arm stills him. Gingerly, she turns him back around to face her. He still wears that stricken look; every muscle in his body is tensed, ready to flee.

 

“… I’m sorry,” they both begin to say, in unison.

 

A nervous laugh escapes Rey. “I just can’t—that—it’s only—” Sucking in a deep breath, willing her fear to subside so that she might soothe his, she tries again. “We can’t have sex, Ben,” she tells him, as gently as she can. “I haven’t got anything to—stop it. Pregnancy.”

 

“Oh,” he rumbles, dully.

 

“Come back,” she says, slowly, leaving no room for quarrel. She wants to cry, at how confused and frightened he looks, but she steels herself. She'll be strong for both of them, if she has to. “Please.”

 

“I can't do something wrong.” The fear again, a horrible jolt, like a bolt of lightning. “I can't hurt you.”

 

“I know. I’m—sorry I shouted. I just… panicked,” she explains, nuzzling his pectoral.

 

“Yes,” he says. “I felt it—then… I did, too.”

 

Rey kisses upwards until her lips meet the sharp bone of his clavicle. “Come back.” She casts her gaze up at him through her lashes, attempting to be coy and flirtatious, attempting to recast the spell that had fallen over both of them before her panic.

 

It works; he huffs, his features relaxing back into an enamored simper.

 

“Can I… touch you? I’ll, um—with my mouth. Like the Twi’lek did? Like you did for me. Is that—”

 

“Yes,” he gasps.

 

She reaches for him with one hand while the other once again shoves his trousers down to his thighs.

 

And then she kneels before him. The deck is cold and hard on her knees, but Ben’s gaze is warm, so warm, and she can barely feel anything at all, except for this: their shared need, a frisson of excitement, of promise. Throwing bashfulness to the wind, she brings her face flush with his groin. Then she licks along the throbbing blue vein the runs up the length of his cock. Root to tip, never breaking eye contact. His skin is smooth; it smells of musk and tastes of salt.

 

“Like this?”

 

“Per… uh,” he groans, cutting himself of as she takes the head in her mouth; the whole thing, unabashed. Her cheeks hollow from the pressure she exerts, sucking on him, and his voice is weak when he manages, “Perfect.”

 

So it’s not what she’d once imagined; it’s not him and her, tangled up in each other. It’s not him inside her in the way she craves and fears. But there is unspeakable power in this position. With each pass of her tongue across the small slit at the tip, collecting the fluid there, or the sensitive corona of the swollen head, each pull of him deeper into her mouth, then her throat— deep, as deep as she can take him, until her nose is buried in his dark crisp hairs, until she’s gagging and teary-eyed and he’s whimpering— he succumbs to Rey.

 

He is hers.

 

Is this not what lovers do, too? They aren't lying together in a sleeper, but that's just semantics. In this instant, they belong to each other, completely. The how’s and why’s of that possession, while she’s got her mouth on him, are immaterial.

 

And when he comes, not long after she’s buried him in her throat— he warns her that he's going to, in a choked huff, tugging on her hair, but she just stubbornly grabs his hips and locks eyes with him, humming— he howls. He howls for her, and she swallows him down, not caring that the taste of him is bitter, because that bitterness is hers, too.

 

For one brief moment of clarity, she has something that belongs only to her. This moment. She traps it in amber in her mind, to be immortalized for all time. Here in this moment Rey is an ageless eternal being, and Ben is, too; they have always been here in this TIE bomber, giving themselves to each other, and they always will be.

 

For one moment.

 

But the moment passes, like all moments do.

 

They curl up together in the bunk, after. Soft caresses and sweet words pass between them. He falls asleep soon enough, replete and content, an overgrown loth-cat draping his warm naked body over hers. When he does, she slips out from underneath him so she can scrounge up a burnt nub of charcoal from the bottom of her bag, and the faded postcard from a pocket of her trousers.

 

Then, with the painstaking care of a woman who knows her time is running out, she begins to sketch the face of the only man she’ll ever love.

 

 

. . .

 

 

A day passes, in which they do not speak of what happened in the _Ravager_.

 

Nor the shootout, nor what they were able to do together, beforehand. Nor the Force. Nor the fear. And definitely not what came after.

 

Or what didn’t.

 

There is peace between them, but it is a fragile peace. He spends that time perpetually on the verge of asking her something, jaw working and eyes questing; she tenses every time he’s close to speaking his mind. She spends the day pretending she doesn’t notice how tentative his touches are now, how uncertain of her he has become. In her hammock that night, Han and Chewbacca having surprised them by returning early, he holds her as if she were made of spun glass. They do not speak.

 

They’re both working through her refusal of sex, maybe. Or her refusal to discuss the circumstances surrounding that refusal. Or maybe just her knowledge of his fear. She doesn’t know. And if they never discuss it, she never has to know. _Just a little bit longer,_ she begs the universe. _Don’t take him. Not yet._

 

Han seeks her out, the next afternoon. She’s sitting in the pilot’s seat of the _Falcon_ ’s cockpit, lost in thought. Ben and Chewbacca are still trying to calibrate the motivator, the final repair before the ship is once more operational.

 

Without saying a word, he drops himself down into the co-pilot’s seat. In companionable silence, they stare out the viewport at the junkyard. Salvagers and smugglers come and go; in the distance, under his canopy, Rey spots Unkar’s blobbish form, his face nightbloomer-red and pinched, visibly angered by the Teedo haggling with him. A steelpecker swoops past. This time of day is, as always, burnt to a crisp and blindingly bright. It is only at the edges of the light, hidden in hidey-holes and tents and canyons across the world, that most things are even able to function during these hours.

 

Only in the shadows. Only in secret. Jakku is a planet that survives the heat and light of the day, but _thrives_ in the dark secret shadows of the terrible night.

 

“So,” begins Han, after a while. “You and him.”

 

“Me and him,” she echoes, shifting in her seat to give Han her undivided attention.

 

“Serious?”

 

Honestly, tiredly, she replies, “I—don’t know.”

 

Han huffs. “It is. For him at least. Trust me.”

 

“Oh,” she says, on a sharp inhale.

 

He lifts a vein-embossed hand to his brow and rubs. “Very serious, if I’m not mistaken.”

 

“Are you ever mistaken about this sort of thing?” she teases, maybe deflecting.

 

She’s leveled with a sort of amused glare, before Han continues, “He’s a good kid. Always has been. Sensitive. Smart. When he was younger—” but he doesn’t continue, only sighing as he stares down at his hands.

 

“What?” she prompts, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees.

 

“Leia and me, we were worried,” he explains, voice gruff with emotion but steady. “‘Bout Ben. ‘Cause of… well, I’m sure he’s told you. Leia’s family, the Force. All of that.”

 

“A bit.”

 

“Thought maybe he’d turn out like a Jedi or a Sith or something, but—he didn’t. Turned out like me instead, miracle of miracles.” His smile is wry, his tone self-deprecating.

 

Now it is Rey’s turn to stare down at her hands, and swallow back all the things she cannot tell him. Which is fine, because Han’s not finished.

 

“You’re good for him, Rey,” he says, quietly. Again she swallows.

 

“I can see it. You’re good for him, and he wants to be a good man… for you.” When she doesn’t respond— unable to speak, and not knowing what to say anyway— Han blows out a deep breath. “He’s relaxed, since you showed up. Sort of. Y’know, as much as the son of Leia Organa _can_ relax.”

 

At last, she manages to croak out a, “Thanks,” before falling silent again.

 

“Hmph.” One of Han’s weathered hands lands on her arm, and a quick gentle pat is delivered. Then the hand is pulled away, just as quickly. “You’d be a good addition—to any crew. Any family.”

 

Her head whips up to find him watching her, his face crumpled with sympathy.

 

“‘Specially this one,” he says.

 

Before she can find the right response, he pushes himself up out of the chair— groaning theatrically when his knees crack— and saunters out of the cockpit, leaving Rey alone once more with the tangled briar patch of her thorny, dangerous hopes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

It’s not until Ben is once more in her AT-AT that evening, seated across the cabin in the salvaged bloggin-leather pilot seat, that Rey spies that tell-tale squint of his eyes, the way his hands grip the holster at his waist. She recognizes his tells by now, and knows what must come next.

 

It’s time to talk.

 

She lowers herself into her hammock, swinging herself; forward, then back. Forward then back. Again and again.

 

“Rey,” he starts. The glowlanterns cast his angular face into odd relief, shadowy and enigmatic.

 

She blurts out, automatic: “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.” There’s heat in his voice, a biting edge, like he’s angry. “Do _not_ be sorry. It’s your body. Your… life.”

 

“I know,” she sighs. “I just… a babe…”

 

“What we did together—it was good. Perfect.”

 

He’s up then, crossing the AT-AT in only a few steps; when he’s on his knees in front of her, huge hands making her muscular thighs look tiny, he says, “Look at me.”

 

So she does.

 

Ben is beautiful, long-faced and solemn and staring up at her like she’s a priceless, valuable thing. A subtle shake of his head, and then: “We leave tomorrow, or the day after. Chewie says the _Falcon_ is ready to fly.”

 

There it is. She’s known all along this moment would come, hasn’t she? Still it burns the back of her throat, sets her eyes afire once more with gathering tears. It’s too much, so she closes them, trying to will time to move backwards.

 

_Not yet. Oh please, not yet._

 

“Come with us,” he says, hushed.

 

The tears are not deterred by the mesh of her eyelashes; they roll freely down her cheeks. She feels his thumb gently brush them away. His voice comes again, this time much closer, his warm body leaning over hers, a whisper in her ear.

 

“Marry me.” He pauses, gauging her surprised reaction. “Or—be my partner. Kriff, Rey—I don’t care how it happens. But come with us.”

 

“I—” is about all she can get out, before her eyes fly open, meeting his. He’s half in the hammock, though his knees are still on the ground, and his thick body is wedged between her thighs, weighing her down. Anchoring her to the knotted ropes. “I don’t—”

 

“Han wants you to join us. Chewie, too. Something about pulling the stick from my ass.”

 

No half-smiles now; he beams at her, revealing his uneven teeth. It’s so vulnerable, that smile, more vulnerable than when they were naked together in the _Ravager_ , more vulnerable than the first time he approached her. The enormity of what he’s asking of her, how much of himself he’s offering to her, brings fresh tears to her eyes.

 

Rey wants to accept at once, without doubts… but she can’t. How can she leave, knowing that her family will return to Jakku for her one day? She can’t do that to them; even if it’s the very same thing they’ve done to her.

 

They’re going to come back. And if she’s not here, who knows if she will ever see them again?

 

“I don’t _know_ ,” she sobs. “I can’t leave, Ben.” He sighs at that, but when she snatches his hands up in hers, he threads their fingers together and sweeps soft, consoling kisses across her cheeks. “They’ll need me,” she attempts to explain, “when they return. I have to wait for them.”

 

For a long terrible while, Ben hides his face in the crook of her neck and does not respond. She feels wetness there, his own tears, and he shudders against her, but by the time he lifts himself up off her, his eyes are dried, his expression calm.

 

“Then I’ll stay with you,” he resolves, sniffling. “Right here. We’ll wait together.”

 

His fear, his devotion, his need— Rey can feel all of it. She should deny him this, she should send him off towards a destiny befitting a Skywalker.

 

She should ask him why he’s so afraid.

 

But all she can think to say is: “You would, wouldn’t you?”

 

“I would.” He’s serious now, no more smiles. “I _will_.”

 

“Yes,” she says, breathless, bringing his lips down to hers before reason can prevail. Forget the doubts, forget the fear, forget everything that tells her this is not going to work.

 

It _can_ work. It can. He’ll wait with her, and she’ll never have to be alone again.

 

“Stay, then. Don’t leave, Ben. Stay with me.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

After parting from Ben at the foot of the _Falcon_ ’s ramp the next morning, with a drawn-out series of love-drunk kisses, Rey jumps back on her speeder. Off she zooms, intent on sharing the news with Mashra and obtaining her blessing, dizzy with excitement.

 

Of course, she knows Mashra will be a bit hesitant; she’s already voiced her reservations. But surely when she sees how jubilant Rey is, and hears how devoted Ben is, she’ll change her tune?

 

Rey is certain she will. Mashra wants what’s best for her; what could be better for her than having Ben here, as a friend and lover and partner?

 

She doesn’t see Mashra at the outpost, so she continues on to her bunker. On finding the hatch shut tightly, she pounds on it with the fleshy side of her fist.

 

“Come in!” rings out Mashra’s muffled reply.

 

With a few turns of the ring that serves as handle for the hatch, Rey unlocks it, then pulls it open. Eagerly, she throws herself down the ladder, jumping the last few rungs to the sandy floor and landing in a heap. By the time she’s seated upright, Mashra is standing over her, blinking at the light she’s let into the otherwise dimly-lit bunker. One large hairy hand hovers in front of her face: an offering of aid.

 

Rey takes it, and hoists herself back onto her feet.

 

“Well,” sighs Mashra, turning back towards the gas-burner, where a handful of dried lichen is steeping in a pot of boiling water, “I figured it’d only be a matter of time before you came ‘round.”

 

“Oh?” Rey crosses the chamber and collapses into one of the leather sandbag chairs, then watches as Mashra strains the tea into two tin mugs. After ambling across the uneven floor, she shoves one of the mugs into Rey’s hands, then settles herself in her own chair.

 

“Getting involved with a man like that, how else could it end—besides heartbreak and ruin?”

 

“What do you mean?” she asks, struck by the enmity in Mashra’s voice. “It hasn’t ended!”

 

Mashra takes a long swallow of her tea, the interior of her Abednedo mouth impervious to the drink’s scalding heat. Then she takes a deep breath, frowning, as though preparing herself for a dive into the sinking sands.

 

“It’s not right, you and him. Look at who his father is, look at the trouble his mother has caused for the galaxy. Look at his uncle, Rey.” Mashra pauses, gesturing to Rey with her tea. “It’s not a good match, nor is it a practical one. Surely, you must want better for yourself.”

 

“I—”

 

“You certainly _deserve_ better,” Mashra sniffs. “You deserve to have your rightful place with your family, and to be with someone your family approves of. If you leave with him, what will they think, when they return? Hm? How inconstant will you seem to them?”

 

She could easily correct several of Mashra’s misconceptions, but her temper flares before well-reasoned arguments can present themselves. Furiously, Rey hurls the mug to the floor, splattering the sand with tea, then shoots to her feet. For once, she looms over Mashra instead of the other way around, and it gives her the edge she needs to spit out, “How inconstant will _I_ seem? They left me!”

 

“With good reason.”

 

“Which is?” she demands, eyes narrowed. “What possible reason could there be to leave a child with a junk-boss like Unkar Plutt? On a desert planet? Why didn’t they take me, Mashra? Where are they now?” She’s shouting now, spittle flying with each word, but the questions have gone too long unasked, and they demand answers.

 

She’s not thinking about how just last night she insisted to Ben that she had to stay, or how Ben agreed to stay with her. She’s not thinking about anything but this open wound that festers at the very center of her being, never healing, never allowing her to move forward or change. This wound her family inflicted on her, the day they left her behind. That day has ensnared her in a web, which has grown tighter and stronger every day since then.

 

Right now, Rey is reliving that day. But this time, she doesn’t do so with the befuddled sorrow of a child who longs for her parents; she does so with the rage of a woman who has grown up yearning and lonely, who is finally on the cusp of belonging, who is frightened she might never be able or allowed to accept what she has gone so long without.

 

But she gets no answers from Mashra; all she gets is a long-suffering sigh. “Child, I cannot say,” she mutters. “They didn’t share their reasons with me, before they left. But I know your dear mother—she would not go unless your father assured her they would return. And there was a good reason.”

 

“You might know her, but I don’t,” argues Rey.

 

“You must trust _me_ , then.”

 

Rey turns from her, unwilling to let Mashra see the angry tears that have begun to well. She swipes at them, and in a hoarse croak, she informs Mashra, “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Ben’s staying here. With me.”

 

“You can’t be serious.”

 

“And why not?!” Whirling on Mashra, teeth bared, she snarls, “He loves me, Mashra! And I him. That’s what I _deserve_ —I deserve to be loved.”

 

“By the grandson of Darth Vader?”

 

The question is asked so coolly, so calmly, so without feeling, that it is like being smacked across the face by a cold frying pan. Rey is pulled up short, mouth working uselessly as she tries to process what Mashra has just said.

 

“What?” she finally manages.

 

“So you haven’t heard the news,” Mashra surmises. She rises from her seat and moves to one of the bunker’s shelves, where she grabs a small hologram projector; after tossing it to Rey, she leans against the shelf. “I would’ve figured you had—or at the very least, that he would have the decency to tell you—since you two have been… off cavorting together.”

 

Rey looks down at the projector, no bigger than the size of her palm, then back to Mashra. “What?” she repeats.

 

“See for yourself.”

 

The projection comes to life with the flick of a couple buttons; it’s a Bothan newscaster for the Channel 72NA HoloNews. The clip is cued up, and as soon as Rey presses play, the bulletin begins.

 

“Shocking revelation coming out of the Senate today on the heels of Senator Organa-Solo’s announcement of her bid for First Senator. It appears fellow Senator Ransolm Casterfo of the Inner Rim planet Riosa has come forward with an allegation as to the Senator and Alderaanian Princess’s true heritage. We go now to footage from the Senate floor, recorded earlier this morning.”

 

The scene shifts, from the newscaster to the Senate’s many-tiered meeting chamber, where a sandy-haired man with bright blue eyes is pointing at something off-screen.

 

“Do you deny, Senator Organa-Solo,” he hisses, leaning over the balustrade of his floating repulsorpod, “that you are the daughter of one of the galaxy’s most feared and hated despots? Do you deny that Darth Vader is your father? Or that there has been an elaborate cover-up to obscure this scandalous truth?”

 

The camera swings around, capturing countless stunned and whispering faces, before landing on Leia, Princess of the long-gone Alderaan, Senator of the New Republic. She looks… defeated, and sad. Bone-tired. She’s smaller than Rey had imagined— petite, really. Her hair is coiled in intricate silver-brown plaits around her face, and despite the poor quality of the hologram, it’s clear that her maroon gown is fashioned from a sumptuous shiny wool, elegantly flattering yet still appropriate for a government official. A cape of the same material is draped over her shoulders, which shake, almost imperceptibly.

 

“I do not,” she replies stiffly, jutting her chin into the air in a way that is all too familiar.

 

Somehow, when the camera finds him again, Casterfo seems both crestfallen and victorious. The Senate erupts into a cacophony of shocked exclamations and gasps, and the bulletin cuts back to the newscaster, who looks a little pale himself.

 

“Casterfo…” he bumbles for a moment, before he clears his throat, regaining his footing, “has issued a statement as to how the Senate will proceed in this matter.” He clears his throat, then continues: “A committee has been formed, to decide the future of Senator Organa-Solo’s place both within the Senate, and within the war effort against the First Order. We’ll be bringing you more on this story, as it develops. We go now to Arkanis, with live footage of the funeral of the First Order's General Brendol Hux—”

 

The hologram goes dark, and she is left with Mashra, who has stood silently at Rey’s side, rewatching the bulletin.

 

“Does… that mean that Ben…” she tries, but she can’t quite bring herself to say it.

 

All of sudden, she knows where Ben’s fear comes from. The terror he felt— at what they were able to accomplish together— it was because of this.

 

Because he knows.

 

And he didn’t tell her.

 

She’s told him everything about herself. Everything. (Almost everything, she’ll amend later, when she thinks back on their time together. She never really told him just how deeply and quickly she’d fallen in love with him— something she’ll berate herself for. Repeatedly.)

 

Barely registering that she’s collapsed down onto the floor, arms wrapped tightly around her bent knees and holoprojector dropped into the sand, Rey tries to puzzle this out.

 

Leia is mother to Ben. Sister to Luke. Wife to Han.

 

Darth Vader is father to Leia. Father to Luke. Grandfather to Ben.

 

Han must know. He must. Does Chewbacca?

 

Ben does, she’s sure of it. But what does it mean for him? Does he carry the same darkness inside himself that Vader did? Is he afraid because he _knows_ he does, or because he suspects he _might_?

 

She recalls the fear that had clouded both their minds, back in the _Ravager_. And that night, with the blaster and her quarterstaff.

 

Of course. _Of course_. Her airway feels tight, like she’s choking, and her chest aches. Everything aches, as a matter of fact.

 

“The way I see it,” Mashra says, interrupting the sickly hush that has fallen over the bunker, “that boy is going one of two ways. He’ll end up a ne’er-do-well, like his father—or something far worse… like his grandfather.”

 

“We don’t know that,” she gasps.

 

“Rey.” Even for her sanguine temperament, Mashra is unnaturally subdued. She stares at Rey evenly, her brow smooth, her hands relaxed around her mug. “Try to think about this rationally.”

 

Rey shudders; a broken whimper is torn from her throat. She buries her face in her arms.

 

There will be no blessing.

 

How foolish she has been, how deftly she has lied to herself. Of course, Mashra was never going to approve of her and Ben. She sees that now. Especially now that she knows what Mashra knows.

 

“If your mother and father were here, they would agree with me, and you know it. You must see reason, Rey,” she says, as if she can bend Rey’s will to her own if she just insists on it enough. “It is not a good match—it was never a good match.”

 

In her heart, Rey concedes defeat. Mashra is probably right. Another sob she cannot swallow erupts like a wet hiccup, and then another.

 

Because now she gets it. All of those _not yets_ were for naught;  _yet_ came anyway. Rey cannot help weeping into her knees. She wants to beg Mashra to turn back time, to not tell her about Vader, to give her just a few more days.

 

She is not ready for _yet_.

 

Here is the stark truth: the very thing that they have discovered together is what Ben has spent his entire life fearing, and denying. And what’s more, in learning his secret, Rey has been reminded of his place in the galaxy— and her own.

 

How can she be so selfish, as to ask him to stay on this forsaken rock with her, discovering a part of himself that he loathes? How can she keep him here, when he is clearly meant to be so much more— whether following in his mother’s footsteps, or his father’s, or forging his own path free of them? How can she divert him from that path?

 

No. She cannot. She will not. Feeling hopeless, understanding what must be done, she weeps. For him. For herself. For what might have been. Mashra shows her compassion, in that she leaves Rey to her heartbreak; silently, she watches over her, intruding only to wrap a scratchy bantha wool blanket around her shoulders.

 

In the dark golden smokiness of light shone through amber, they have tentatively stumbled into love; now there is only the light, no more amber. In the shadows, in ignorance, their love could thrive. But in the light?

 

A blazing trail of truth has scorched Rey, within and without.

 

This, she understands, they cannot survive.

 

 

. . .

 

 

By the time she leaves Mashra's bunker, the sky is blood red and packed with heavy clouds that will bring no rain or relief from the stifling heat. The wind has died down to nothing, the whole world hangs in a few final moments of stasis. Everything still feels vivid to the point of surreality to Rey; implicitly she knows, as she pushes her speeder to its limits, racing back to the junkyard, that she will remember every detail— the scent, the sky, the stillness— for the rest of her days.

 

Ben is right where she left him, right where he always seems to be: waiting for her, at the bottom of the _Falcon_ ’s boarding ramp.

 

He pulls her into his arms before she can say a word. Maybe he senses her anguish, although her eyes have long since dried, and she did what she could to gather her wits before leaving Mashra’s.

 

Under his breath, almost past the point of hearing because Rey’s ear is pressed to his chest, inside of which the thundering of his heart is deafening, she hears him ask, “How’d it go?”

 

The ache blooms once more in her own chest— a physiological response to that question and the inevitability of what must happen next. Trying to breathe through it, she murmurs, “Let’s take a walk.”

 

Rey cannot think of a way to begin, so for a long while, they meander along in stilted silence. The air is still, but not peaceful; she’s wound tighter than a shock whip and she’s buzzing with twice as much nervous energy. Ben senses it, of course. How could he not? They’re connected now. He sends anxious, curious frowns her way as they walk, his gaze lingering as he tries to decipher her mien, her bearing, her silence.

 

But she is desperate. Still feeling as though she’s choking, she holds onto these last moments with him. The last bit of life with Ben; even now, she knows that she will miss this, miss him, horribly. It eats at her. So— maybe out of pure selfishness— she refuses to speak.

 

In this way, they venture far enough that they come to the Sitter. There is a lonely tower of rock several kilometers north of Niima Outpost, carved into being by a great river an eon ago, when Jakku still had rivers. On it, there sits a man. A monk and a hermit, who has devoted his life to solitude and his supposed connection to the Force. She can just barely spy him atop the outcropping; he sits facing south, watching the scarlet sun sink behind the dunes. Wondering if Ben will ask her about him, if maybe they can prolong this fragile peace just a little while longer, she darts a cautious glance his way.

 

“Okay, enough,” says Ben, quietly. He stops walking, and takes her hand in his.

 

With a tug, he halts her progress as well, bringing her round to face him. “Rey…” He looks worried, and he should be, and already Rey knows two things: she can’t put this conversation off any longer, and she will not escape it unscathed. “What’s wrong?”

 

 _Do it,_ she spurs herself on. _Do it. You have to say it—you have to let him go._

 

“I can’t…” is all she gets out, before the first sob wracks her chest.

 

He reaches for her but she pulls away, tugging her hand free of his.

 

“ _You_ ,” she amends. “You can’t stay here with me.”

 

“What?”

 

A step forward from him, a step back from her. He’s frowning, confused. If he touches her, she’s lost. If he puts his arms around her, if their lips meet— she’ll never have the strength to do this. She’ll never set him free from her, from what their connection has done to him. What it’s awakened.

 

It's no more than a whisper, when she forces the words out. “Darth Vader."

 

Ben’s face falls. His arms hang limply by his sides; for one moment, his features contort with horror and despair, then he schools them into that old stoic mask. Full lips pressed together calmly, eyes narrowed to slits, chin raised high in the air. Proud. Dignified.

 

“So you heard. My mother…” he pauses, exhaling heavily through his nose, “is not having a good week.”

 

“How could you not tell me?”

 

“How _could_ I?” he sends back. A long beat passes, and then: “I tried. I told you, I decided long ago—I’m not him. I’ll—never be like him.”

 

“Then why hide it?”

 

He sighs. “Leia told me the truth when I was eight years old. She’d been protecting me, before that—my uncle taught her to shield my presence from other Force users, even before I was born.”

 

“She has the Force too?” Rey gasps.

 

“Yes,” he bites out, looking at her like she is crushing all his hopes. Again, he corrals his expression into something neutral and inscrutable; it kills her, to feel him move backwards like that. Away from her, even if he’s standing right there. Even if she could make herself take two steps and reach out to him, he’s slipping away from her in ways that can’t be halted with a touch or a kiss.

 

“I told you.” He tosses his hair back from his face and glares up at the Sitter. “Han Solo needed me—and I him. I didn’t need the Force, I didn’t need Vader’s legacy. I was eight years old. My parents asked me to choose my future, and keep their secrets.” He shrugs. “So I did.”

 

He turns towards her, although he doesn’t make another attempt to step closer. “It doesn’t mean anything. Who he is—who I am. I’m not him.”

 

“Ben, I… I can’t ask you to stay.”

 

She blinks rapidly, trying to keep the tears from once again falling. She’s cried more today than she has in a long time, and more since she met him than she has since parents left; her eyes burn from all the crying. _No more tears,_ she begs the universe, although she knows it’s not a request that can be granted. All that is going to be left to her is her tears, when this is said and done.

 

“You don’t have to,” he says. “I want to be here. With you. Together, remember?”

 

“You can’t—” she starts, but he’s blinking back tears now too. She must make a choice; she decides to take the path of least resistance. “I can’t ask you to be nothing like me, left behind on a dead planet. You’re a _Skywalker_ ,” she mumbles.

 

“No. No!” he bellows. Frantically, he tears a hand through his hair, an angry gesture she’s witnessed his father do, from time to time. “Rey, what are you saying? This isn’t about Jakku—”

 

“Okay, it’s about me.” She sounds so ragged, so despondent, she can hardly believe it’s her lips moving, her voice speaking these words. “You… you deserve better.”

 

He looks struck by that. Hurt. “Do I? And you get to decide?” he spits out, before huffing, “Yeah, it’s about you. Your fear. In the _Ravager_ , when we—”

 

“Fine,” she heaves, wetly. “It’s about my fear.” Now she steps towards him, but it is Ben who stumbles back. Away from her. Away. “But it’s about yours, too.” Two more steps: hers forward, his backward. “When we use the Force together, you’re so afraid, Ben. Why? Is it because of him—Darth Vader?”

 

“Don’t.” He shakes his head, stepping back again. She couldn’t reach him now, not even with her quarterstaff extended in her hands, he’s put so much space between them. “Don’t. I’m not him.”

 

“But you’re afraid you could be.”

 

Rey pulls herself up to her full height. Stiffly, formally, in the manner she saw his mother address her rival on the Senate floor this morning, she declares, “I cannot ask you to stay here with me, Ben. I can _not_ ask you to spend your life in fear of the things we can do together—to risk becoming like him. I can’t. But I can’t leave. So you have to.” She bites her lip, then forces the last bit out, flinching when her voice breaks: “Without me.”

 

It’s almost done now, she can tell. He has tears in his own eyes, and his lips quiver before they draw back into a sneer. Anger. Fine. She’ll take his anger.

 

“It’s fine,” she bluffs. “We had fun together, we might have been in lo—” no, she can’t quite bring herself to say it, because right now she has to finish this, even though her chest is beginning to crack open, and his wounded glower is pouring venom inside, and she’s going to die from this pain, this is going to kill her—

 

“But this isn’t your path. You’re meant for other things. Better things, probably,” she says.

 

“I wasn’t so afraid,” he murmurs. “Not when I was holding you.”

 

“You were, though. I _felt_ you, Ben.” She nearly chokes on her sob. “This isn’t—we both knew it wouldn’t last.”

 

“I didn’t,” he says, the hurt in his tone bleeding out into the dusky air. “I didn’t know that.”

 

“My family—”

 

“You’re still holding onto them. Why?” he seethes, volume rising as he speaks. “I let go of Vader." A lie, Rey now knows, but not one she has the heart to correct. “Let go of them—they let go of you. Sold you to a junk-boss. Forgot about you!”

 

Rey sucks in a sharp inhale, breathing all of his vitriol into herself. “They didn’t!” she shouts, refusing to meet his eyes.

 

“They did.” A long painful second passes; Rey offers no response. It’s all she can do not to throw herself at his feet, and beg him to take back his angry words if she takes back hers. She wants to beg him to ignore her, to fight for her, to stay— even if it dooms them both. “Rey…” he implores, “Look at me.”

 

How can she know, at that moment, that this is the last sliver of vulnerability that he will ever share with her? Would she have answered differently, if she had known that in the next breath he was going to shut her out so tightly that she'd feel as though she’d been jettisoned into the cold dark emptiness of space? Would she have said something less heartless, less callous?

 

Would she have shown him grace?

 

She looks at him. He’s moved close again. So close. “I love you,” he says, hushed. “Please—”

 

Rey will wonder for years after. She’ll replay this moment, and her next words, again and again. And each time, they will bury her, a rockslide of cruelty from which she can never unearth herself.

 

But in this moment, Rey does not benefit from the wisdom of hindsight. So she hugs herself defensively, looks down at her booted feet, and mumbles:

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

It’s all done now. All their moments, all their days, all the not yets, all the tenderness, all the understanding, all the forgiveness— ruined. Her boots are scuffed, ragged; a hole is forming near one toe. She can barely see the hole, through the tears.

 

Horrible, empty silence ensues. She can feel his gaze, trying to pry her open again. She can't bring herself to look up.

 

“I’m sure you are,” he scoffs, at last. Only then, when she hears that disgusted acceptance in his voice, does she allow herself to drink him in, one last time; he’s sneering at her, lip curled, shaking his head. “I thought I knew you. I thought you and I…”

 

“You were wrong,” she cuts across him, another errant sob breaking free. But she takes nothing back. _Let it be done,_ she prays, to R’iia, to the Force, to whoever or whatever will release them from the pain of this separation. _Let it all be over now._

 

“You’re right.” His eyes are shuttered once more, his thoughts unknowable, his body unreadable. He turns from her. The last thing Ben Solo will ever say to her before he allows her to break both their hearts is almost lost to the growing distance them and the still night; she has to strain her ears to catch his final words.

 

“I was wrong.”

 

With that, he’s gone, storming off towards Niima Outpost.

 

Rey drops to the sand for the second time in one day, cross-legged and crying. For a long time, she sits like that, at the foot of the Sitter’s rock tower, watching Ben grow smaller and smaller in the distance until he disappears completely behind a dune. The Sitter, not visible from this angle, offers no sage wisdom from on high— he has given his life to silence, and probably resents her and Ben’s intrusion upon that devotion.

 

She’s not welcome here, although she’d very much like to climb up there and devote her life to silence and abstention as well. She basically has anyway, why not make it official?

 

She cries and she cries and she cries and she _cries_. Until it hurts, until she’s empty, until everything feels hollow and and brittle and broken.

 

Finally, just as the last of the red is drained from the darkening sky, she wipes her cheeks dry with one of the drapey ends of her linen wrappings. Then she picks herself up and plods her way back to her speeder. She will barely remember the ride back to the AT-AT, later— it is conducted in a kind of sorrow-filled fugue state.

 

What she will remember is the feeling of tumbling into her hammock. The feeling of more hot tears on her cheek. The feeling of a hot jagged splinter burrowing itself deep into her chest while she stares up at the bouquet of nightbloomers he picked for her, which she has hanged on a copper wire above her hammock.

 

The feeling of regret.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She’s on her speeder before sunrise the next morning, but the _Millennium Falcon_ is nowhere to be seen when she arrives at the junkyard.

 

She searches for them everywhere, frantic, desperate to take it all back. But wherever she looks, she finds only more absence. More nothing.

 

The junkyard. Niima Outpost, the Starship Graveyard, the Badlands and the canyons, the foothills of Carbon Ridge, Tuanul and the two shanties that constitute Cratertown. Everywhere. Every last place she can think of.

 

But they are nowhere, nowhere, nowhere. Endless aching nowhere.

 

Gone. The _Millennium Falcon_ is gone, Chewbacca is gone, Han is gone.

 

Ben is gone.

 

Her love is gone.

 

Finally, as another day slips into night, she returns home to her empty AT-AT, and once more curls up in her hammock, not bothering to light any glowlanterns, or feed herself, or sleep. She clutches her purloined postcard, stares at the tallied marks— the total sum of her life, scratched each dusk into the wall of an abandoned armored transport in the desert of a nowhere rock— and she thinks of nothing.

 

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Endless aching nothing.

 

She does not leave for nearly a week. Not until Mashra finds her and forces her to get up, helping her to bathe and eat. With wet eyes but a firmly-set snout, she strong-arms Rey back to work, compels her to keep living.

 

No. Living is too strong a word, for life after Ben. It lends more credit to the quality of her days than they deserve. Rey does not _live_ , she subsists. She survives. She fights, as she always has, all her life.

 

She endures.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Two years later, when her family returns, they are pleased as can be to find her exactly where they left her.

 

And that, as they say, is that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there it is. I've always been a 'rip the band-aid off' kind of gal, so I decided to put the rest of this flashback into one (2) chapter. I actually sort of broke my own heart writing this; there were real tears shed. If somehow, you're still here reading, and I managed to break yours too, please stick with me. I'm going to make it better. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Also, I know I probably haven't said this enough times at the beginning/end of chapters in this fic, but thank you thank you thank you SO much to everyone who is reading, kudos'ing, commenting, and/or subscribing. It means... the world to me. Seriously.**
> 
>  
> 
> Okay. So. Links?
> 
> Who's who, gffa edition: [Ransolm Casterfo](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ransolm_Casterfo), [Darth Vader 😏](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Anakin_Skywalker/Legends), [Brendol Hux](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Brendol_Hux), the [Sitter](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sitter)
> 
> Who are the [Blarina](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blarina), the [Bothan](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bothan), the [Uthuthma](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Uthuthma)? By the way, in my mind, this is the character I envisioned while describing the Uthuthma [10 points if you catch this reference!]:
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Where is [Blowback Town](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Blowback_Town), [Plaintive Hand plateau](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Plaintive_Hand_plateau), [Valley of the Eremite](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Valley_of_the_Eremite), and [Kelvin Ridge](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kelvin_Ridge)? How about [Arkanis](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Arkanis)? [Home of [Arkanis Academy](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Arkanis_Academy).] [Riosa](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Riosa)?
> 
> More about the [Battle of Jakku](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Jakku). Also, some of the events of this chapter were inspired by/reinterpretations of the way things went down in [_Bloodline_](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bloodline_\(novel\)), which I did not read except for the Wookieepedia page. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> So, what's the [Senate chamber](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Senate_chamber) and what's a [repulsorpod](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Repulsorpod)? What's it mean to be [First Senator](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/First_Senator)? [It's a BFD.]
> 
> There are so many [news outlets](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:News_media) to choose from, so I just went with the [Chanel 72NA HoloNews](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Channel_72NA_HoloNews). Sounds legit, no?
> 
> What's a [tentacle-cactus](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tentacle-cactus)? And a [loth-cat](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Loth-cat)?
> 
> Some transport things: [motivator](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Motivator), [Quadex power core](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Quadex_power_core), and [Tradium](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tradium)!
> 
> And finally, the truly important questions of this chapter... what is [sackcloth](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sackcloth), and what is [bantha wool](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bantha_wool)?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me for now. Feel free to come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive) if you need a hug. I know I did, after writing this. And thank you, again, for reading! ❤


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “To hear them… repeating his name so often… was a new sort of trial to [her] nerves. She found, however, that it was one to which she must inure herself. Since he actually was expected in the country, she must teach herself to be insensible on such points.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**42 ABY.**

 

Chandrila is blue, from a distance.

 

Rey can just catch sight of it, if she leans forward in the cargo hauler’s uncomfortable jumpseat and peeks out the starboard viewport. A deep coruscating sapphire blue, like the fruit of the Tuanulberry bush. Dressed in wisps and sheets of drowsy white cloud, it spins through the velveteen black cosmos, illuminated by a single star and orbited by two moons, one a glowing lavender and the other golden amber.

 

The hauler glides into the planet’s orbit. Land masses begin to emerge from beneath the passing clouds. Between the seas rise white-tipped peaks and shadowy green valleys; in the places where the world is flat, there stretch vast expanses of wheat-hued plains.

 

This is no barren rock. It’s a living planet, alive in its own right and supporting all manner of lives in the bargain. She breathes in the ship’s stale recycled air, and tries to quiet the strident thumping of her nervous heart.

 

She’d thought that leaving Jakku would change everything, would change her. She’d thought there would be a defined before and after, like there was with _him_. It’s been three days: she can say with clarity that it both has and has not. She’s left something behind, she knows that much; a piece of herself has been abandoned to the desert so she could be free. There was something electrifying about it: leaving, finally, after all this time. Boarding the ramp of the hauler, bidding a wordless farewell to Niima Outpost, the Graveyard, the Badlands, Cratertown, the dunes and canyons and everything else that had made up the first twenty-seven years of her life. It had been like a stiff breeze across sweat-chilled skin.

 

She’d felt alive, in that moment. Truly alive.

 

But as she watched Jakku recede in the viewport, becoming nothing more than a pale blonde dot before it was swallowed by darkness, a wave of apathy washed over her.

 

She was still Rey, after all. Child of the desert, forgotten girl— when they soared past Jakku’s moons and then its sun, when they made the jump to lightspeed, all the galaxy a blue-white blur outside the ship—

 

Unaltered. Forever a sad shade; still tired, still lonely, still alone. Even in a hauler full of fellow travelers on their own journeys across the Core and Inner Rim, she was alone. Is alone. Will always be alone.

 

The days have passed, in galactic standard hours. One day, then two, then three. Listlessly, without all the labor that would lend shape to her days, she has eaten, and slept, and roamed the drab rusted passageways, looking at everything and seeing nothing.

 

And then the time comes— between what seems to be one blink of her weary eyes and the next— for them to strap themselves into their seats, because they’re broaching Chandrila’s exosphere. The ship bounces along, fighting the drag as it sinks down towards the planet’s surface.

 

“As I understand it, we have left Chandrila’s stratosphere and entered its richly oxygenated troposphere,” says the genteel librarian droid strapped in next to her, who has provided a continuous monotone narration of the proceedings whenever he’s encountered her, ever since she sat down next to him on the first day of her journey.

 

Now, at the edges of the seas, rising from the forests, and nestled alongside the dark snaking rivers, Rey spies the silvery-white gleam of cities, sprawling and proud.

 

“The average year-round temperature in Hanna City, the planet’s capital, located on the shore of the Silver Sea,” he continues, as the tallest of said capital’s alabaster buildings sweep into view, “is a balmy twenty-four degrees Celsius. Average rainfa—”

 

“Yes,” Rey interrupts, not bothering to tear her eyes from the spires and domes, the busy skylanes and _trees_ , everywhere trees. A sprawling forest rolls away from the city as far as the eye can see; more shades of green than she’s ever imagined could even exist in the galaxy. “Thank you, Persee.”

 

“Oh! But—oh, I see. Well. You are—quite welcome, Miss Rey,” he replies, before lapsing into dejected silence.

 

Before she knows it, they’re easing down onto the Hanna City Spaceport, a massive duracrete landing platform upon which Niima Outpost could fit with room to spare. Three officers— militia, maybe, or law enforcement of some kind— board the hauler to check the identichips of disembarking passengers. Once she's been checked and approved, she stumbles down the gangway behind a Bothan family, the bright glare of the Chandrilan morning sunshine making her eyes hurt. Her sackcloth satchel crammed full of all her possessions is slung over one shoulder, she clutches her quarterstaff in a death grip; she turns just in time to watch the hauler lift up into the air and zoom off into the sky.

 

That's that, then.

 

Rey worries at her lip. The platform is busy, ships endlessly arriving and departing, blaster rifle-armed officers everywhere and all manner of sentient species milling about. Teary-eyed hugs are taking place alongside stacks of cargo crates; the ground vibrates beneath her feet as does the air around her, from all the commotion.

 

A deep inhale; she fits as much Chandrilan air into her lungs as she can. The starport doesn’t smell particularly sweet but the air carries scents that are decidedly unfamiliar, so she savors them.

 

Forest, she notes, looking out across the landing pad to the trees that hem one side of the port. Trees. And looking the other way, at the looming silver and white buildings— city. People.

 

(Was she able to smell these things on him? Can she still dredge them up, the sense of calm she felt when she pressed her face between his jaw and his throat, breathing in the smell of trees and mechanic’s grease and cities and  _him_?

 

Maybe it was all in her mind.)

 

Rey’s been given strict instructions from her sister, which she does her best to follow; weaving between ships and cargo and passengers and pilots and officers, she makes her way towards the city side of the port.

 

 _Go through the station._ _Do_ not _buy anything._

 

She passes into the duracrete terminal, a hulking grey eyesore that seems oddly brutish and slapdash compared to the beautiful silver filigree and glass edifices rising up behind it. Then she crosses the echoing hall, attempting to filter out the shouting vendors and bright advertiscreens and million other things that draw her eye in every direction. It’s almost too much, the colors and the sounds and the people, R’iia’s shorts, all the _people_. To avoid standing spellbound in the current making its way towards the doors, Rey keeps her head down, eyes riveted to her booted feet.

 

_Leave through the big front doors, then walk down the stairs. Poe will be there, waiting for you._

 

 _Do_ not _talk about his older sister._

 

_He’s been quite snippy since he got back._

 

Exiting through the looming front entrance out onto the streets of Old Hannatown district, quite close to the water, she’s set off blinking once more at the shift from the terminal’s stony gloom to cheery morning sunlight. It seems to set the city ablaze.

 

And sure enough, when her eyes adjust, there he is. Parked at the foot of a hundred or so stone steps is none other than the retired Captain Poe Dameron. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat of a beat-up old airspeeder. Its aggressively cheerful pink paint is chipped and scuffed, its leather seats— visible because its roof has been retracted behind the back seat— are marked with stitches where they’ve been torn and mended. The thing is wide and flat, hovering a half meter off the street; it could easily fit six or seven on its two bench seats.

 

A good vehicle for a family, maybe.

 

Poe doesn’t see her at once; his feet are propped up on the console, and he’s scrolling through something on the datapad he holds in one hand. A pair of dark glareshades hide his eyes from her.

 

If the shift from terminal to street made her blink, this shift, from the Poe of her memory— thirty-something, outfitted in the standard orange flightsuit all pilots of the New Republic wore, his dark hair trimmed short and his cheeks clean-shaven, an easy smile making his handsome face more approachable— to Poe as he is now, on the brink of forty and looking tired, dressed in trousers and boots and a drab nerf-wool sweater, all speckled with mud… it takes her breath away.

 

He’s got greys in his longer-than-regulation curls; he’s grown a grey-flecked beard. Struck by the passage of time, feeling like a thousand-ton anchor has been strung from her neck, Rey stands frozen on the top step of the terminal, staring down at him.

 

As if he can feel her eyes on him, he looks up from the datapad and scans the vicinity. His head swivels towards the station; she catches the surprised jump of his dark eyebrows from behind the glareshades.

 

“Rey!” he calls out.

 

That breaks the trance. With a start, Rey begins to pick her way down the stairs. Poe jumps out of the speeder, doing the same in reverse; they meet in the middle, and he gestures for her to hand him the bag. She obliges without comment but holds onto her quarterstaff, giving him a subtle shake of her head when he reaches for it.

 

“Uh, right,” he says. “C’mon then.”

 

Once her bag is deposited on the back seat, he wipes his hands on his trousers, then pulls in a deep breath. Awkwardly, they stand there, looking at each other.

 

“Hullo, Poe,” she manages at last, through a smile so wan he _must_ be able to sense her unease.

 

“Hey. Sorry about—the clothes.” His grin is weak too; more of a grimace, really. “We’re in the middle of harvest season.”

 

“Oh. It’s… no bother. Thank you, for coming to get me.”

 

He sighs, then runs his hands through his curls. The sun catches the silver strands, drawing her notice again; he’s got even more than her. Another reminder: none of them are getting any younger.

 

“Welcome to Chandrila.” He shrugs. “It’s… good to see you, Rey.”

 

“Yes, er—same.” She juts her hand out, in lieu of offering a hug to the man who, for a brief time, wanted to marry her. Lips pursed in a dissatisfied moue, he takes it. They shake once, perfunctorily.

 

“You look…” he trails off, watching her hand fall back to her side. Rey adjusts her grip on her quarterstaff and waits for him to go on. He doesn’t.

 

“Yes?” she prompts, after a beat.

 

Is it that bad? Is she as altered as he is? Again, she recalls how weary she’d felt of her own mind upon leaving Jakku, how unchanged she felt. But then, how can she compare who she is in her mind to the way she appears to others? Self-conscious, she smooths her hand over her tightly braided tresses, a new hairstyle. _New planet, new hairstyle, new Rey,_ she’d told herself when she’d awoken just hours ago on the hauler. Who knows if saying the words makes them real? Maybe it’s pointless. But she’d figured she should at least try.

 

“Swell,” he mutters, not meeting her eyes. Hands shoved in the pockets of his trousers, he rocks back on his heels. “Real swell.”

 

“…Th—anks,” she says.

 

Across the street stands the entrance to the Old Hannatown Market, cheerful and welcoming. It’s a stone arch from which hang colorful fluttering flags, each inscribed with a different sigil. Beyond it, there is a small plaza lined with stalls and shops, and the ingress points of several shadowy winding alleys. The entire place is teeming with shoppers and vendors, all laughing and conversing and haggling. There’s more activity in that plaza and its alleys than she has seen in the entirety of her life on Jakku.

 

Over their heads, skylanes buzz with traffic: airspeeders and hovertrains and bikes and taxis and buses. Above that, a perfect azure sky is streaked with high cirrus clouds, tattered and spare. A yellow sun shines. These, at least, she recognizes. Two familiar things: a sun and a blue sky. Just like home.

 

Land transports come and go along the street. The road— she’s only ever seen one before, the pilgrim’s road, no more than a long stretch of sand compounded by centuries of passing monks— is paved with duracrete, same as the the port’s landing zone and the station. It glitters in the sun. There is noise, and warmth, but it is not like Jakku’s warmth. The air holds moisture; she can feel it on her skin and in her lungs, after a lifetime of sere desert air.

 

She should have left a long time ago. She should have come here, she should have breathed this air. Should have been with her sister and her nephews.

 

“Uh,” Poe says, interrupting her reverie, “We should get going. Got a lot of work to do in the orchard, and—Goz is pretty eager to see you. She’s,” he clears his throat, his expression somewhere between annoyed and embarrassed, “not feelin’ too well today.”

 

“Right.” She nods. When he gestures to the passenger side of the airspeeder, she clambers in beside him.

 

Having apparently already run out of safe topics for conversation, they head off in uncomfortable silence.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The Dameron house is a small one-story bungalow situated on a strip of land where the forest that surrounds Hanna City meets the sands that flank the Silver Sea. A country home, technically, though riding by airspeeder it takes mere minutes to reach it. The house is backed by tall narrow-trunked trees with peeling silver-brown bark and branches dripping in dark green needles, and its living room, which Rey can see from the wayside garage where Poe parks the airspeeder, looks out upon the water through floor-to-ceiling windows. Its white steelstone walls shine in the morning sun; a dark green roof, interrupted by wide stretches of skylight, slopes down over the front and back of the bungalow.

 

There isn’t anything ostentatious in its architecture. As Gozetta has complained to her over her periodic hologram calls, it is a modest home. _In harmony with the elements around it,_ Rey thinks. It looks, to her, as though it has been nestled quite comfortably into this meeting ground between beach and forest. She likes it, from the moment she sets eyes on it.

 

They climb out of the airspeeder, Rey’s bag settled on Poe’s shoulder, and walk slowly towards the house, still without speaking. The soil around the home is sandy; idly, she wonders if they chose this place on purpose because it reminds Gozetta of Jakku. Then she scoffs at her own sentimentality, because of course, her younger sister did not grow up on Jakku. She could not possibly have much attachment to the planet.

 

Off a ways, near the dunes that separate beach from trees, sits a gazebo constructed from light green wood. Rey ogles it without shame; it’s beautiful, its sturdy columns elaborately carved with fruits and flowers. But that’s not what draws her eye. Inside it are two dark-haired boys seated on a bench swing, beside what appears to be a general labor droid. They’re playing with a fleet of model starfighters. She recognizes them immediately as her nephews; they are the spitting image of Poe. They’re so big.

 

She has already missed so much of their young lives.

 

“Tintolive tree,” says Poe, out of nowhere. Rey glances at him and he nods at the gazebo. “That’s what—the gazebo. It’s made from tintolive tree, native to Chandrila. It was a wedding present from Senator Organa.”

 

She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from peppering him with a hundred questions. Instead, she simply rasps, “Lovely.”

 

The boys have taken notice of their father’s arrival; haltingly, the older tugging on the hand of the younger, they scramble over the dunes to greet him.

 

“Dad!” shrieks the older, throwing his arms around Poe’s right leg.

 

“Dad!” emulates the younger, doing the same to the other.

 

“Oh-ho, all right,” Poe laughs, tousling their hair. “Say hello to your Aunt Rey.” The boys peer up at her from behind their father’s legs, suddenly bashful. “Rey,” he say, “This is Poe Junior and Weir. C’mon guys, say hello.”

 

They issue a barely-audible, “Hello,” in unison before redirecting their attention to Poe. In turns, they impart on him a rambling tale about the bulabird nest they found earlier this morning.

 

Rey glances towards the house. She thinks she might catch sight of a pale face in the wall of glass— strikingly like her own, she and her younger sister have always looked more like Hedda, while Verla’s looks resemble Ergel’s, haughty and sharp— but before she can wave, it disappears.

 

“Is that so?” Poe replies, bemused, as they ramble. He varies this with the occasional, “Huh,” and “Wow!”

 

Her attention is drawn to the mechanical sounds of a landscaping droid, hard at work weeding a small garden blooming with vegetables and flowers; another beeps out something to it in binary from an open window, and it responds in kind, a litany of irritated-sounding whistles and chirps.

 

“Little Poe’s almost five now,” Poe says, calling her gaze back to him and the boys. They grin up at her; the younger Poe is missing one of his front teeth. “So he’s allowed to take Weir as far as the gazebo. Exciting stuff, huh?”

 

“Ah,” she says. For lack of any experience with children and not knowing what else to say, she smiles at Little Poe and affirms, “Very exciting!”

 

“Is it true you’re a scavenger?” he blurts out.

 

“Poe—” says his father, warningly, but he’s already got the next question lined up:

 

“Is it true you’re a desert rat? Also, what’s a desert rat?” He barely takes time to breathe before adding, “It is true you helped Dad find old ships on Jakku during the war?”

 

Poe winces. “All… right, that’s enough, big guy. Time to head to the orchard! Whaddya say, want to help Dad pick some fruit?”

 

“Yeah!” comes their raucous response. Poe ushers them towards the house, with instructions to put on their grubby orchard clothes.

 

When they’re out of earshot, he sighs and gives her a sheepish shrug. “They’re fine,” he says. Rey isn’t sure if he’s reassuring her or himself. She nods along, agreeing either way. “Lots of energy, very rambunctious. I was the same, back in the day.”

 

“‘Course.” She forces a smile, trying to convey her understanding. “They seem very nice. And—they look just like you.”

 

“You think?” he asks, perking up.

 

“Spitting image.”

 

He puffs up like a Vworkka at that, his face glowing with pride. Just as quickly as his spirits rise, they fall; his eyes linger on her face a moment too long, he opens his mouth to speak, and Rey is afraid he might be about to address their shared past, so she hastily proclaims, “I’d better go inside, see how Goz is doing!”

 

Poe slams his mouth shut for a moment before replying, “Right. Yeah. I’ll just… work to do. Harvest, and all that.” He hands Rey her bag, then turns towards the speeder, leaving her alone on the lawn.

 

“Poe!” she calls out.

 

“Yeah?” He spins back, eager, as though he’d been hoping she would object to his departing.

 

Earnestly, Rey says, “I’m—so glad, that you made it back. From… well. That you’re back.”

 

A half-hearted nod. His face is directed away from her, towards the sea.

 

“Thank you again,” she continues, “for letting me stay here. It must be nice, to finally be home again and I—” she scrunches her nose, hesitating, unsure if it’s the right time to bring up the sister he lost in the war. Gozetta had forbid Rey from mentioning her, but that doesn’t seem right. Yes, it’s uncomfortable enough between them already, but shouldn’t she pay some sort of respect? For a moment, she wavers, unsure what recourse is kindest. Now Poe watches her, dark eyes shining; it’s likely he knows exactly what’s got her so conflicted.

 

The boys’ shouts cut through the tension. They’re barreling towards the speeder, dressed in attire equally drab to Poe’s. Sensible for farming. Beyond the sands, the sea lives up to its name; its roaring silver swells glitter so brightly that Rey cannot look directly at them. The breeze rushing past them is briny; she had never imagined, in all the holos she’s seen of oceans, how much they would smell of salt.

 

“I’m so sorry about Terena,” she whispers, at last.

 

A slight raise of his shoulders, like he is shaking off the sentiment. “We’ve all lost people.” He tilts his head, words infused with unspoken meaning. “Haven’t we?”

 

Does he know? He might; his family is acquainted with the Solo-Organas, after all. And the Damerons and Luke Skywalker are old war buddies, aren’t they?

 

(He might even have fought the First Order alongside… him. _Ben,_ she forces herself to think. Maybe if she says his name more often in her mind, it’ll hurt her less to hear it spoken aloud.)

 

Then again, he could be talking about her and himself. Does Poe still feel jilted, after all these years? He looks at her with a guarded expression, which suggests he might. But what did he expect? That she would arrive in Chandrila and apologize— _again—_ for her kind but firm rejections of his short-lived attempt to woo her?

 

That she would want to dredge up the week he spent moping around Cratertown after, before he and Gozetta suddenly became an item? Or their whirlwind courtship, encouraged by Mashra? The impromptu marriage in Tuanul? Their hasty departure? Rey lifts her chin high. She has nothing to apologize for. Not to Poe.

 

Besides, she’s had enough of the past, of bad blood and half-buried bones. Let Poe’s affection for her stay on Jakku, where she did her best to swiftly snuff it out.

 

“I suppose we have,” is all she says.

 

He huffs at that, mouth closed and eyes shuttered. “Okay, Rey,” is all _he_ says, sounding unimpressed, before he turns once more towards the airspeeder where her nephews sit waiting for him.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She enters the house from the beach side, slipping through a hallway of closed doors— leading to bedrooms and washrooms, she suspects— before walking out into an airy open room that clearly serves as parlor, dining room, and kitchen.

 

At the far end of the space, a kitchen droid beeps cheerfully at her as it cleans a nanowave stove. Through the windowed ocean-facing wall, Rey can see the beach and the shining water. The room borders on sweltering, a result of morning sunlight. She can tell that it was probably very nice when it was first built; now it is strewn with toys and clothes, its carpeting faded and stained, its white Fibrolite walls dappled with scuffs.

 

Quietly, in case her sister is asleep, she lays her bag and quarterstaff down.

 

“So,” laments a reedy voice, “you’ve arrived. Finally. Thought maybe you’d forgotten me.”

 

She draws near the sofa. Her sister was hidden from view by its high back, upholstered in what was once doubtlessly luxurious phil-fiber brocade. Another step, and now she can see her; there, on the sagging cushions, lies Gozetta. One of her slim pale hands is flung dramatically over her eyes. Her form, not dissimilar to what Rey’s might have been at twenty-two if she’d been fed well all her life and had borne two children, is covered up by a thick knitted blanket. She’s taller than Rey had remembered, taller than Rey even; her socked feet are propped up on the threadbare arm at the opposite end of the sofa.

 

Rey circles it and seats herself beside Gozetta’s leg. Pushing her hand away from her face, Rey offers up a tentative smile.

 

“Hullo, Goz,” she says softly, looking upon her sister— not some flickering holoprojection, but the real thing— for the first time in years. The resemblance between them is uncanny; same freckled cheeks (though hers have become sunken where Gozetta’s are still full), same pert nose, same soft square face and high brow, same messy chestnut brown hair.

 

“I’m sick again,” is Gozetta’s reply, followed by a plaintive: “I haven’t been able to eat a thing all morning. And no one has come to check on me _once_. The boys ran in here just to change, then ran out again without saying a single word to me!”

 

“Good to see you, too.” Rey smirks, and Gozetta rolls her moss green eyes.

 

“You took so long to get here,” she says, accusatory.

 

“There were a lot of loose ends to tie up before I could leave.”

 

“But I missed you! What could be so important that it would keep anyone on that ugly rock?”

 

Rey sighs. “Just… things. Had to get the bar in order, see Verla and Pa off, sell my speeder—”

 

“No!” Gozetta’s response is a shocked gasp; she understands, at least to a degree, how much the speeder meant to Rey.

 

“I couldn’t ask Mashra to pay to bring it on the transport,” Rey says, with studied indifference.

 

“That’s a shame.” Gozetta frowns. Then: “Aren’t you going to ask me about the Damerons? They’ve been so rude to me lately, Rey, really, it’s a miracle I haven’t taken the boys and—”

 

“Well,” she interjects, adjusting her perched position on the sofa cushion, “ _I’m_ here now, and I’m never rude to you. And I really did miss you, too. How about your kitchen droid—”

 

“Elnine-Geeate.”

 

“Okay—Geeate can make us some tea, how about? And you can tell me all the news of the Damerons and Chandrila and everything that’s happened since we last spoke.”

 

“I suppose.” Wiping her dry cheeks, Gozetta sniffles piteously. Then she cranes her neck, directing a barked command at the droid across the room. “Geeate, tea! The good stuff, manellan jasper. And… bring me a plate of sliced nerf jerky. And a bowl of brestel nuts.” She stops to consider for a second, then adds, “And a couple of koyo fruits, pitted and peeled.”

 

L9-G8 trills out its understanding and begins to prepare what she’s asked for; Gozetta is hardly paying attention, having already pulled herself up into a seated position and launched into a diatribe on her current bout of illness.

 

Rey settles herself on the cushion where Gozetta’s legs were previously resting. Feeling strangely content in a way she doesn’t care to examine, she listens closely, comments sparsely, and commits herself wholeheartedly to the delicate mission of cheering her sister up.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Chandrila is populated entirely by snobs and rubes,” Gozetta concludes, around a mouthful of brestel nuts. “And not a single one of them appreciates the importance of our ancestry.”

 

Now it is Rey’s turn to roll her eyes, at hearing her father’s tired complaints coming out of her sister’s mouth.

 

“A travesty,” she deadpans.

 

“It is!”

 

“But… you live between the ocean and the forest, Goz. Look at it.” She gestures at the window; the sea rolls in and out, its silvery-blue waves tipped in pearlescent foam as they crash upon the sand, and the tall trees sway in a gentle breeze under the nearly cloudless sky. “It’s wonderful. Paradise.”

 

Gozetta gives a slight harrumph; Rey thinks it sounds something like an acknowledgement of the truth in her words.

 

“Being a mother is hard,” she admits, in a small voice. “I’m not sure if I like it.” Her eyes are wide, brimmed with genuine tears. “It makes me feel like a bad person, saying that.”

 

“You’re not,” Rey assures her. Gozetta shrugs so she repeats, more insistently, “You’re not. Really. You’re not bad, to feel that way. You’re doing your best, aren’t you?”

 

That gets a reluctant nod.

 

“Well, then.” Rey tilts her head to meet Gozetta’s eyes. How young she looks, how scared. “Oh, come here.”

 

She gathers her sister up in her arms, hugging her tightly. Gozetta gives a little whimper, then falls quiet. For a few minutes, they simply sit there, listening to the waves and the quiet whirr of L9-G8 as it tidies up.

 

“How about some fresh air?” Rey suggests, after a time. “I’d like to see that orchard I’ve heard so much about.”

 

“Yes,” Gozetta says, nodding and wiping her cheeks, down which run two drying trails of tears. “Yes, of course. I shall give you the grand tour.”

 

Groaning, she rises from the sofa, pulling Rey up with her. Again, her height surprises Rey; though they’d lived together for a time, she’s forgotten just how statuesque her little sister is. She stands at least ten centimeters above Rey.

 

“Let me just change into something nice.” She gestures down at the simple cotton leggings and t-shirt she has on. “Since we will be going past the Great House.”

 

Rey purses her lips and casts her eyes down at her own desert-stained linen clothes. “Should I—?”

 

“No, I wouldn’t worry,” she tosses back over her shoulder, as she moves towards the hallway of closed doors, “they’re not expecting much from _you_.”

 

She’s disappeared into a bedroom before Rey can respond, which is perhaps for the best, since all that comes to mind are sarcastic, barbed retorts. In some ways, Gozetta possesses a much softer and sweeter temperament than their sister or father, more in line with that of their late mother; in other ways, she is every bit the product of selfish, pompous people who endlessly encouraged her self-indulgence while raising her. If Rey stands any chance of nudging her sister towards a better-natured character, she must be patient. She must be understanding. She must speak with care.

 

 _Give it time,_ she bids herself. _Choose your battles wisely._

 

 

. . .

 

 

The Great House is more a manor than a house, built from the same materials as Poe and Gozetta’s bungalow— white steelstone walls, a sloping dark green roof interrupted by numerous skylights. It’s two stories high, and at least twice the square footage of the bungalow. Or so Rey guesses, from her cursory inspection. Wrapped around three sides of the manor is a wide veranda, furnished with cushioned wicker chairs and low tables.

 

“Gozetta!” exclaims a cheerful feminine voice, from one of the chairs. The sisters shift towards the source: an older grey-haired woman, whose familial resemblance to Poe is undeniable. She sits beside a young woman and an older man, both also clearly related to Poe. They’re laughing over something, and as Rey and Gozetta draw closer to the veranda’s white balustrade, it becomes clear that they’re sharing a late breakfast of sandwiches and caf.

 

“Good to see you up and about,” the older man says, smiling. “Feeling better?”

 

“I suppose,” sniffs Gozetta. “Rey, this is Mister and Missus Dameron, Poe’s parents.” She waves her hand in the direction of the younger woman. “Brixie, his sister.”

 

“And you must be Rey of Jakku. It’s so good to meet you!” The older woman beams at Rey, creases fanning out from her warm hazelnut eyes. “Please, call us Shara and Kes. No need to stand on formality around here.”

 

Gozetta issues a soft contemptuous snort, but none of them react. Shara merely says: “Would you like some breakfast?”

 

“I’d love some,” she replies, before Gozetta can reject the offer. She makes her way around to the veranda’s stairs then settles in a wicker chair beside Brixie, who welcomes her with a smile very much like her mother’s.

 

“So, Rey,” she says, as Kes pours her a mug of caf and Shara prepares her a plate piled high with sandwiches— a reaction, perhaps, to her narrow frame— “I want to hear all about Jakku, and your journey here! Tell me, did it take very long?”

 

And with that, Rey finds herself launching into a heavily edited version of her life to a captive audience of Damerons. As she speaks, she inhales the delicious meat and veg sandwiches and dark sugary caf, stealing glances every so often at her younger sister, who sits listening sullenly by her side.

 

It’s a pleasant enough tale, at least the way she tells it, and peacefully, the Chandrilan morning passes them by.

 

 

. . .

 

 

In time, the conversation turns to the Damerons. Just as Rey shared her life, they share theirs.

 

Shara Bey was a lieutenant in the first Galactic Civil War; Kes was a sergeant. They fought together, flew together, and over the course of a few years, fell in love. By the end of the war— not the decisive battle on Endor, but a conflict on Vetine involving a mysterious Force tree— Shara and Kes were married and more than ready to settle down somewhere with Terena and Poe, who’d spent the early years of their lives with Shara’s father while their parents flew missions for the fledgling New Republic.

 

So they’d happily transitioned into semi-retirement on the jungle moon Yavin 4. Though they’d continued flying— not for the New Republic but for Yavin's Civilian Defense Fleet— the majority of their time had been devoted to raising Terena and Poe, and a few years later, Brixie, while tending to their small koyo tree orchard.

 

But when skirmishes between the New Republic and the burgeoning First Order had started up in the Outer Rim, not even a decade after the first civil war had concluded, Shara and Kes had been forced to make a decision: leave their children and rejoin the fight, continue defending Yavin 4 and risk their children getting caught in the crossfire, or relocate to a safer Inner Rim planet.

 

“In the end,” Shara says, giving Kes’s hand a squeeze and returning his fond smile, “there was really only one choice we could both live with. I rejoined the war, serving as lieutenant of the Green Squadron until my heart condition took me out of service. And Kes came here with the koyos and the uneti tree and the children. He built a wonderful home for me to return to, didn’t he?”

 

“He really did,” sighs Rey, swept up in the romance and derring-do of their tale. She pats her full stomach with contentment. A glance to her side reveals Gozetta’s stiff posture and stiffer smile; Rey wonders if hearing about her in-laws’ activities on the side of the war opposite Ergel’s is what makes her uncomfortable, or if it’s simply her boredom with the whole affair.

 

“Served on the Chandrilan Civilian Defense Fleet, though,” Kes adds. His tone is teasing; he waggles his dark eyebrows for emphasis. “Wasn’t quite ready to hang up my flightsuit.”

 

“Best pilot they had!” Brixie crows. “Until Poe broke all his records, anyway. And I should know. I flew with both of them, once I was old enough.”

 

A sharp twinge of jealousy shoots through Rey, not only at the thought of having a family as kind as the Damerons, but flying with them. “A family of pilots,” she says. “Remarkable.”

 

Brixie shakes her head. “Not me. Didn’t suit me at all! I barely made it through flight school.” She laughs when her mother shakes her head.

 

“Don’t let her fool you,” Shara says. “She might not have enjoyed it, but she was top of her class.”

 

“I like what I’m doing now much better, in any case.”

 

“What’s that?” Rey asks.

 

“I’m an engineer, over at Chandriltech,” Brixie informs her. “I help design droid parts.”

 

“Help!” Kes scoffs. “Don’t be so modest, Brix. You design droids. Yourself.”

 

A faint blush pinks up Brixie’s dimpled cheeks; she smiles diffidently at her father. “Well, yes—that’s what I meant, Dad.”

 

And then, when Shara pulls Gozetta back into the conversation with an inquiry about her children, Brixie leans in towards Rey, one elbow resting on the arm of Rey’s chair. In an undertone, she says, “We’ve heard so much about you, Rey.”

 

It’s difficult for her to hide her surprise at that. “You have?”

 

“Oh, sure—Gozetta talks about you all the time.” Brixie gives her a meaningful look. “Far more than the rest of your family, I’d say.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I think she’s missed you,” she says, speculatively.

 

“… Oh,” Rey repeats. “I—I see.”

 

“And… she really looks up to you. I can hear it in her voice, whenever she mentions you.”

 

Rey feels a blush heat up her own face. Just as she’s about to issue some demurral, Kes loudly declares, “Yes, true… should we take a walk through the orchard, then? Find Poe and the boys, show our guest here the grounds?”

 

“Good plan, Dad,” says Brixie, and— for the time being— the subject is dropped.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The orchard begins not far from the manor; there’s a stretch of neatly mowed lawn, and then the koyo trees appear, in one neatly-planted row after another stretching over the nearest rolling hillock, and the next, and the one after that, right up to the distant edges of the surrounding forest. Scents new to Rey fill the air. Kes is more than happy to identify each in kind— the dark rich earth used to grow the trees, the rich cloying fruit weighing down the leafy branches, the bright eukamint oil being burned to repel Yavinian tree-ticks, which makes the inside of her nostrils tingle— and Rey breathes them all in deeply as he speaks, categorizing and filing away their particular dimensions.

 

They choose a path at random, and begin to climb the gentle swell of the hillock. Soon enough, they come across harvesters.

 

“Not enough money for an entirely droid operation,” Brixie explains, at the sight of Humans and blue-skinned Pantorans plucking and depositing the dark koyo fruits into rolling durasteel bins. She waves to them as they pass, and distractedly, they wave back. “So we have a mix of workers and droids.”

 

Sure enough, further ahead, after they pass over the crest and start down into the shallow valley, they come across one such droid; built from shining cerillium and possessing five arms that pluck and clip the fruit from the tree simultaneously, each carefully depositing its harvest into the large bin attached to its base, it is truly a marvel to watch it work. They pause for a moment to do just that.

 

“See how careful it is with the fruit?” Kes asks, pointing to one of the droid’s many arms as it places— not drops, not throws— the koyo fruit in with the others. “Brixie reprogrammed it to do that. Used to be far too rough, would just bruise 'em up.”

 

“Just a couple alterations to its central processor,” Brixie says modestly. “It was nothing, really.”

 

Rey doesn’t know much about fruit; what she does know (what she remembers), she prefers not to think about. But the koyos are certainly interesting specimens. They’re round, each about the size of her palm, and their shiny peels are black as onyx. Shara notices her interest and takes one from the bin, handing it to her.

 

“Try it!” insists Kes. “They’re the best they’ll ever be right now. Height of the season.”

 

An indignant huff comes from somewhere behind her. “What, none for me?” snaps Gozetta, as she elbows past Brixie to lean over the bin, plucking a fruit for herself. With relish, she takes a huge bite, and dark red juice spills down her chin.

 

Rey rolls her eyes at her sister’s petty jealousy, which causes Brixie to giggle. Then she bites into the waxy skin. The flesh underneath is tart and soft and blood red. Its juice is uncontrollable; before she can prevent it, it has trickled over her jaw, down her neck, and past her wrists.

 

(A faint memory: long, thick fingers feeding her a chunk of much-sweeter jogan fruit. A pair of dark eyes covetously watching her chew. The feeling of being desired, and belonging. _No._ As quickly as it arises, she bats it away.)

 

Kes is already speaking when she’s shaken free of the recollection. “… the best, we’ll sell as fruit,” he is saying. “The rest we’ll turn into koyo wine, juice, or preserves.”

 

“Lovely,” Rey hums. The Damerons grin with delight; Shara pulls a handkerchief from a pocket of her jacket and hands it to her.

 

“Transplanted from Yavin Four by yours truly,” Kes tells her, all full of pride. “Best damn fruit in the galaxy.”

 

 _It’s a nice enough fruit, but nowhere near the jogan,_ thinks Rey. _This fruit hasn’t changed my life._

 

But she nods politely, and onward they tread.

 

 

. . .

 

 

As they walk, Shara loops her arm in Rey’s; their steps slow until they’ve fallen twenty paces behind.

 

“We really have heard so much about you from Gozetta,” she murmurs thoughtfully, glancing at the others to ensure they’re out of hearing range before canting her head to look at Rey. “She admires you, do you know that?”

 

Rey lets out a huff, once again surprised. Who is this sister, who supposedly goes on and on about her virtues? To be sure, she’s never met her.

 

“She does?”

 

“It might be hard to tell, but—I believe so,” Shara says, with a firm nod. “And you know about her… moods, I’m sure. Her health problems, that is.”

 

“I’m familiar…”

 

“They always seem to coincide with a time when there is work to be done, or a visitor coming she doesn’t care for.” Shara sighs. “If it were just that, it would be one thing. But the _droid_ , Rey. I just—it’s not right.”

 

“The droid?” Confused, she tilts her head at her sister’s mother-in-law. The Dameron residence houses a handful of droids; in her short time since arriving, she’s spotted at least four.

 

“It’s—look, I understand she feels poorly sometimes. But using a labor droid for childcare?” Rey has seen the labor droid she’s referring to; the RIC-920, a clumsy claw-handed thing that rolls around on one wheel, its dull brown plating rusted in places. It had been sitting in the gazebo with her nephews when she arrived. Shara’s mouth pulls downward in a discomfited frown.

 

“The boys have told me that it tries to vacuum their hair and vibro-sand their faces when they’re upset. One time Little Poe cut himself, and do you know what it did?”

 

Whatever happened, Rey can tell it was not the paradigm of appropriate childcare; she braces herself, asking, “What?”

 

“Glued his skin back together. And not with wound glue, mind you—with industrial adhesive, the stuff Poe keeps on hand for his speeder,” Shara scoffs. “Gave him a terrible infection—we had to soak the whole hand in bacta for two days!”

 

“Oh,” she says, wincing. “That’s not good.”

 

“She’s _your_ sister. I know this is meant to be a nice visit, and the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable. But… as I said, you’re one of the few people she actually listens to, Rey.”

 

Up ahead, Gozetta and Brixie and Kes have located Poe and the children. Red juice stains Little Poe and Weir’s faces and hands. Excitedly, the boys hug the newcomers. Despite what Shara is telling her, Rey cannot help but imagine what a _happy_ childhood this must be for them. Idyllic.

 

She clears her throat. “I wouldn’t necessarily say—”

 

Shara interrupts, with a knowing glance her way. “Please. Talk to her. If she must use a droid to watch those boys, she needs to spring for a nanny droid. Or at the very least, let Brixie make a few changes to Rick’s processor.”

 

Rey looks back to the boys. The elder has already resumed his climbing of the nearest koyo tree; once again, the younger attempts to copy him, jumping up against the trunk.

 

If anything were to happen to them, especially a mishap so avoidable as droid malfunction…

 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she promises. Shara gives a relieved sigh, and nods.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Not two minutes after Rey and Shara have caught up with the group, Brixie is at her side, steering her between two koyo trees onto a footpath to the left of the one everyone has begun to traverse back towards the Great House.

 

“I like Gozetta a lot, really,” she whispers, as a prelude to whatever, Rey senses, is going to be her complaint. “We all do! I just don’t think she has any respect for Mom.” She leans towards Rey as though they are plotting a conspiracy. “It’s the little things. Rejecting our invitation to dinner unless she thinks someone important is coming, always pretending she’s sick when there’s work to be done in the orchard.”

 

“I—don’t think Gozetta had to do much work, growing up,” Rey says, a weak excuse and she knows it. She swallows, trying not to let resentment in, trying not to let it color her next words. “Baby of the family and all that.”

 

Brixie snorts. “Well I’m the baby too, and _I_ still have enough sense to help out. This is what she married into, isn’t it?”

 

“I’m not sure she…” Rey falters. Of course, she agrees with Brixie. Gozetta probably should’ve come to terms with the man she’s married by now, and his family, and their situation. Or she should’ve found some resolution to her unhappiness. And yet she finds herself not at all surprised to hear that her younger sister’s response to her circumstances is petulance and avoidance.

 

“She’s mother to two young children,” she points out, instead.

 

“Pfft, fine, except she hardly spends any time with Little Poe and Weir.”

 

“Her illnesses—”

 

“Oh, please,” Brixie cuts her off. “Rey, you don’t really believe all that, do you?”

 

Rey looks around, as though a diplomatic way out of the conversation might be found dangling from one of the koyo tree branches.

 

Brixie continues. “If she changed even just a little bit, it would mean the world to all of us.”

 

“How little?” she wonders.

 

“Well, how about how she’s always calling Mom and Dad ‘Mister and Missus Dameron’? Mom’s asked her not a dozen times, but she still does it.” She rolls her eyes at Rey. “Like she’s some kind of visiting dignitary or something. Tell her to call them Shara and Kes?”

 

An exasperated sigh escapes Rey before she can restrain it. While Verla inherited Ergel’s haughtiness and cruelty, Gozetta has their father’s opinions about formality and rank ingrained in her very soul. She nods a wordless agreement.

 

As though she has read Rey’s mind, Brixie continues: “And… maybe she could discuss your father… less? His place in the Empire, I mean.” Well aware of where this is headed, Rey once again winces. “We’re—well, we’re a family of New Republic fighter pilots. It’s—” Brixie huffs, shooting Rey a bemused look, “…let’s be honest—it’s awkward. Very awkward.”

 

“Yes, alright. I’ll talk to her,” she concedes hastily.

 

“Bless you, Rey,” sighs Brixie. “I knew you’d understand.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You know what the problem is?” Gozetta hisses to her, as they ramble back through the forest that stands between Great House and the Dameron bungalow. “Every time the boys come back from grandma and grandpa’s, they’ve been loaded up with sparklemint sticks and fizzer-sweets and stormfruit candy! How exactly am I supposed to deal with two boys bouncing off the walls from all that sugar and carbosyrup, hm?”

 

Rey shakes her head and twitches her shoulders sympathetically. And then, when Gozetta sinks into indignant contemplation, she hazards a meek challenge: “What—about the droid?”

 

“Which?”

 

“The one that watches them. The labor droid, Rick Nine-Twenty.”

 

Gozetta groans. “Oh, is that what Shara was nagging you about? I shouldn’t be surprised, I really shouldn’t—it’s one of her favorite topics. Look, Little Poe is nearly five, he can take care of Weir for a few minutes here and there.” After a beat, she adds, “Rick is just there as… a failsafe.”

 

“Maybe if you found a droid better-suited—”

 

“What would suit me better, I think,” says Gozetta, running roughshod over her, “is if my husband and my in-laws didn’t encourage the boys to run so wild. I do my best to discipline them, and then Mister and Missus Dameron just spoil all my efforts!”

 

“Ah,” is Rey’s tepid response.

 

“Not to mention how little they care about my personal well-being,” she sniffs. “Remember how you found me all alone this morning? They never even bother to check on me, even though they _know_ I have a poor constitution.”

 

Rey could bring up the fact that Poe left the orchard where time-sensitive harvesting was clearly in full swing just to come collect Rey from the station, or that it is Gozetta herself who has instituted the distance between herself and her relations, but once again she decides to choose her battles carefully.

 

“I’m sorry, Goz,” she says. For a bit, they continue on over the sandy path, dappled sunlight dancing across their faces. In the absence of conversation, Rey revels in the whisper of the needled branches far above their head, the cheerful birdsong, the distant roar of the ocean. Finally, she takes a deep breath, then begins, haltingly, “Er, by the way… why do you call them that? Mister and Missus Dameron, I mean. It’s a bit… formal, don’t you think?”

 

“Manners. It’s about being polite,” Gozetta huffs. "Having some pride."

 

“I think they might prefer just their names, Goz.”

 

She makes a face. “Their first names? How common. How familiar! What would Pa say?”

 

“Speaking of that…” Rey bites her lip, then decides that this _is_ a battle worth fighting. “Do you think it’s, er… you know they were on opposite sides of the first war. A little discretion might go a long way, when it comes to discussing Pa’s politics. Don’t you—don’t you think so?”

 

Gozetta blows an angry breath out through her nose, then looks away. They share another quiet minute or two of walking, until, just as the bungalow is coming into view through the trees, she allows, “… Maybe.” A sigh follows before she asks in a wheedling tone, “Could you just… say something to them, about the sweets? They might actually listen, if it’s coming from you. An outsider, I mean.”

 

It hurts to be called an outsider, but Rey lets that go, just as she has so many slights and insults her family has knowingly and unknowingly hurled at her over the years.

 

“I’ll—try, Goz,” is what she murmurs, the best she can offer. “I’ll try.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“It’s not my dream job, farming koyo,” Poe confesses to her, that evening. “If I had my way, I’d still be out there with my squadron, cleaning up the Outer Rim. But… my kids were growin’ up without me. And this orchard was my dad’s dream.” He rubs the back of his neck, then takes a sip from his bottle of beer. “He’s not getting any younger, either.”

 

“None of us are,” Rey replies.

 

They’re sitting out in the tintolive gazebo, waiting while Gozetta reads the boys a bedtime story. She tilts her own bottle back, taking a swig. The carbonation of the beer tickles, and a very low tolerance— despite working at a cantina on Jakku, she rarely sampled the merchandise— has her head already beginning to buzz, slightly.

 

“She’s trying her best.” He’s switched topics without warning, but Rey needs no elaboration to know he’s referring to Gozetta. “She’s a fine woman and a fine mother… when she’s not in her, uh—”

 

“Moods?” she prompts.

 

“Sure.”

 

“That’s good,” she says, blandly.

 

“I know my family get annoyed with her,” he gripes. “And she gets annoyed with them. But everyone’s just doin’ their best.”

 

“Ah.” And there it is. For one instant of utterly lunacy, she contemplates asking Poe if he’s happy, or why he even married Gozetta in the first place. But she fears she knows the answers to both those questions; it won’t do either of them any good to have them out in the open.

 

Some things, she has learned, are better left unsaid.

 

And anyway, he’s already barreling onward with his train of thought. “She thinks my old man should lend us money. Did she tell you that?” He snorts, irritated. “Wants to build a bigger house. It’s ridiculous—our house is just fine. She’s just—”

 

He hesitates, so Rey deigns to help him out, supplying: “Spoiled?”

 

“Well,” he laughs uncomfortably. “I wasn’t gonna say it.”

 

“Don’t worry, I will.” She grins at him, reassuring.

 

He laughs again, more subdued this time. “She is trying, though. I love her for that. I just wish…”

 

Rey takes a long swallow from her beer, needing the fortification. Not much above a whisper, she asks, “What do you wish?”

 

The bench’s chains rattle as Poe shifts to face her; a moment passes, then two, then he has been staring too long. Rey fidgets and looks away, out at the moonlit sea. The contrasting shades of amber and lavender from the two moons— Chandra and Chandrakant— blend to a muted pink glow, making the rolling waves appear by turns rosy gold and a fathomless obsidian.

 

His sigh is almost lost to the susurrus of the sea. Whoosh, swish, shurr. Whoosh, swish, shurr. He swings them gently. Somewhere behind them, she can hear a door opening and closing; her sister is rejoining them.

 

“Nevermind,” he mutters, right as Gozetta calls out, “ _Finally_ , I thought they’d never go to sleep! I brought another round.” She settles herself on the bench between them, passing out the bottles. “What are we discussing, hm?”

 

“The… moons,” answers Rey, lamely.

 

“Oh!” Gozetta pulls from her own beer with a satisfied little hum. “Yes,” she says, “they are nice, aren’t they?”

 

Rey can hear how hard she’s trying to be upbeat and amicable. She appreciates her little sister for that.

 

No, not just appreciates.

 

She feels a fierce surge of protective love, a need to steer Gozetta away from the influence their father has had. A need to protect her from herself; a need to ensure that her life here with Poe is a happy one. Resolved, she throws an arm around Gozetta’s shoulder to bring her close. Gozetta accepts the gesture with another soft hum, resting her head on Rey’s shoulder and tucking her legs up under her.

 

Poe says nothing; he just continues swinging the three of them, back and forth. He doesn’t meet Rey’s eyes again.

 

 

. . .

 

 

A few days later, Rey wakes to the pitter-patter of a light rain falling on the roof and skylights.

 

There’s a musicality to it that she loves at once. There’s no chronometer in her room, but if she had to guess, she’d say it’s still early morning. From her vantage point, snuggled under the soft warm covers of the guest bedroom's comfortable sleeper, she can watch the drops splatter on the windows above her head; from somewhere in the house, she hears Little Poe and Weir running, their footfalls booming through the halls.

 

Attempting to roll over while not disturbing the warm cocoon she’s created in her sleep, she slips her hand in the drawer of the nightstand and rummages around until her fingers touch upon a small tin box. Inside, the box is lined with tufts of dried tsu-seed. Carefully, one eye not yet fully open, she burrows a finger into the fluffy fiber until she finds what she’s looking for: a smooth black pearl.

 

Pearl in hand, she rolls over onto her back once more, watching the rain and rolling the pearl around in her right hand.

 

The rain picks up, turning into a steady tattoo that drowns out even the boys. Funnily enough, she is reminded of sandstorms on Jakku; the sound of sand battering the metal walls of her sad little home is not so different from water pouring down on the roof, and where Jakku had the high wailing screech of the winds, Chandrila has the low rumble of thunder and the storm-tossed sea.

 

There is a twinge, just a bit of stray longing, that comes with recollections of Jakku. When she tries to explore that, tries to understand how she could ever miss the place that was the stage to so much of her misery, she quickly stumbles upon its source: what she really misses is the home she built with her mother. Side by side, day after day, with the help of a few rented construction droids, they worked together to build the cantina that would become Ergel’s livelihood. Reacquainting themselves with each other, learning how to make each other laugh and smile; in the end, they’d gotten less than a year together. But in that time, Rey had learned what it truly meant to be a daughter. To be loved like a daughter.

 

Hedda. Rey frowns up at the rain. Poor woman, she did her best to temper Ergel’s worst impulses. Mostly failing, mostly faltering. She can still remember the way guilt and regret would make her mother’s face fall, whenever she looked at her middle child.

 

 _I’m so sorry,_ she would gasp. _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

 

But by that point, she’d understood guilt all too well. And although she couldn’t seek absolution herself _(from him)_ , she could give it to her mother. Could offer whatever relief forgiveness might bring. So she had, again and again.

 

 _For what, ma?_ And: _It’s alright, ma. You did your best, ma. I love you, ma._

 

Her sister’s voice rings out above the rain, demanding quiet from the boys. They pay her no mind. In fact, their roughhousing seems to grow louder.

 

Time passes. Rey doesn’t rise from the sleeper. The pearl grows warm between her fingers and palm; still she gazes up at the skylight and beyond, at the steely clouds blurred by splattering raindrops. She bobs along in the current of her thoughts, never lingering, never fixating. Guilt and love and regret pass her by, all faded from the years that have passed. Not-quite sadness or happiness, but a kind of numbed contentment: all are like fellow travelers headed somewhere on the same current. The rain keeps falling.

 

But eventually, as has inevitably happened every time she’s let her mind wander since the day she met the Skywalkers, she finds her thoughts landing on _him_.

 

She can’t help but ruminate on his origins. Where did he grow up? In downtown Hanna City, with its glittering skyscrapers? In the narrow alleys of Old Hannatown? The political district? Where?

 

And furthermore, has he ever been here, to the Damerons’ orchard? Has he walked the sandy path between the families' homes? Has he jumped into the shining Silver Sea?

 

Maybe, maybe not. There's no way of knowing. But still she wonders; the dam that held back thoughts of him all those years has burst, and all rivers lead her back to him now.

 

Where is he? Who was he, really, before they met? Who has he become, during his years at war?

 

She considers the many, many news articles about his shining career in the New Republic’s military.

 

She considers the look on his face, the last time they spoke.

 

She wonders if he’s married. If he thinks of her.

 

If he resents her, still, after all this time.

 

Although it’s unsettling to think about him, like a scab being picked at, she can’t deny how comfortable she is otherwise, lolling around in this sleeper, watching the rain bombard the skylight. If she could, she would happily spend the entire day right here.

 

An entire day spent reading, maybe. Watching a holoprogram, or seven. Luxuries the likes of which she could never afford on Jakku. Gozetta would sulk about her absence, unless…  she could convince her to join in. It could be fun, even. They could spend the day lounging in the sleeper, reading and laughing and becoming friends. Real friends, like they should’ve been growing up, like they never got to be during their brief cohabitation on Jakku, because of Verla and Ergel. Rey smiles softly to herself at the idea.

 

But the boys have begun to scream at one another and Gozetta is screaming back at them, growing shriller by the minute. The right thing to do is make herself useful to her sister, and she knows it.

 

So with one last lingering look up at the blurred canvas of cloud and rain above her head, Rey heaves a heavy sigh and throws the covers back— not exactly ready to start her day, but resigned to doing it anyway.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The Damerons have frequent guests, as Rey learns in the following week. They’re popular, not only because of their kindness and hospitality, but because of how well-respected Shara, Kes, Poe, and Terena are for the important roles they played during the first and second civil wars. Even Brixie has played her part in the Civilian Defense Fleet, a feat that does not go un-admired.

 

A family of pilots, of leaders, of optimists. Rey loves them more and more each passing day. And the awkwardness with Poe abates, in time; once he’s gotten over the shock of seeing her— _have her looks changed so much?_ she wonders, _and for the worst?_ — they fall into something like friendship. Or at the very least, they are able to maintain a veneer of congeniality.

 

“Tomorrow,” announces Kes one morning, having walked over to the bungalow for coffee with his son while they plan out the processing and distribution of the koyo fruit they’ve harvested, “Lando Calrissian is coming to dinner. You are all invited to join us at the Great House, if you want.”

 

“ _The_ Lando Calrissian?” Rey wheezes, her mouth hanging agape.

 

“There’s only one in the galaxy,” Kes replies, with a chuckle.

 

And that is how Rey finds herself, on the following evening, dining up at the Great House with her sister, the Dameron family, and the legendary Lando Calrissian.

 

 

. . .

 

 

He’s already there when she and her sister arrive, Poe trailing into the dining room behind them.

 

The table setting is simple but elegant; indicative of its owners’ good taste. Lando is seated beside Kes, who is at the head of the table. They’re deep in discussion, matching sober expressions on their lined faces, when Rey and company cross the threshold.

 

Lando stands abruptly upon seeing them. His clothes put the homespun simplicity of everyone else’s to shame; shiny black fleekskin trousers and shoes, and a billowing Aeien silk shirt under a matching cape, both a royal blue color, like the sky in the moments before the sun rises. He tosses the cape back over one shoulder as he flings his arm out dramatically and cranes forward into a deep bow. Its lining is ornately printed silver silk; it shines in the light of the old-fashioned wax candles that serve as a centerpiece on the table.

 

He’s dressed exactly how she’s always imagined royalty should look. All he’s missing is a crown.

 

She glances down at her own clothes: a simple dress on loan from Gozetta, made from faded grey silkweed. It’s too big in the bust and hips, and falls all the way to the floor though it is meant to brush its wearer’s ankles. She feels ridiculous, but Gozetta had insisted.

 

Introductions are passed around, then everyone moves to take a seat. Rey cannot help but be struck by how gallant Lando is; it’s utterly incongruous with all the tales she’s heard of his roguish adventures and misdeeds. He’s got a mustache and goatee— clearly once dark but like his hair, now mostly white. While he speaks, he tugs on the tapered end of the mustache. Even that small tic, undoubtedly unconscious, seems dignified to Rey.

 

A servant droid brings out a bottle of koyo wine, which Kes uncorks and pours for everyone. It’s so dark it’s almost black, but the wine feels velvety on Rey’s tongue and tastes rich and full, almost like caf, except sweet instead of bitter.

 

“Good?” Kes inquires, gauging her reaction. “That’s been aging in the cellar underneath the Great House for about ten years.”

 

“It’s wonderful,” she says. “Maybe even better than the fruit.”

 

“Maybe?” asks Lando, with a smirk. “Undoubtedly better. It’s a triumph, old friend.”

 

Kes and Shara chuckle delightedly at that, and a few rounds of toasts ensue.

 

Food begins to arrive from the kitchen; appetizers, salty fried shroomchips and crumbly blue-milk cheese, then fresh marmalfish served on a bed of crisp Naboo lettuce, and finally, the main event, a massive rack of nerf ribs, slow roasted and glazed in a koyo reduction, served with creamy mashed daro-root and pickled Brekka beets. The kitchen droids have truly outdone themselves.

 

Small talk is exchanged while they eat, though Rey— consumed with the variety of new flavors and textures— pays it very little mind. Eventually, as everyone is finishing, the conversation drifts towards the topic of the war. More specifically, its end, and what will come next for the galaxy. Rey is only half-listening; long after everyone has finished, she is still abashedly sneaking nibbles from her plate.

 

And then, without warning— or perhaps she has simply missed the warning signs, as consumed as she has been with consuming— the discussion turns to Captain Solo.

 

“There’s a lot of speculation about what he’ll do now,” Lando says, in response to a question from Poe that she did not hear. Again, he is fiddling with the end of his white mustache. “Because of his mother’s… illustrious career in politics, people like to assume. But nothing’s set in stone.”

 

Rey is paralyzed; unable to speak, to move, to breathe. She listens helplessly as her own sister— traitor, can’t she see the chasm opening up in Rey’s heart?— prompts him, saying, “You know him well, then.”

 

Lando laughs and leans back in his chair. “Since he was a boy. ‘Uncle Wanwo’, he used to call me.” His smile turns fond, eyes gleaming with nostalgia in the candlelight. Softly, reflectively, he says, “The good old days.”

 

“Terena flew under his command,” Brixie informs him, with a heavy swallow. Poe takes her hand in his, and they share a long, sad look.

 

“She died a hero,” says Poe. “Shot down in the battle of Atterra Bravo.”

 

Lando grimaces. “That’s a damn shame. I might’ve met her, in passing. His squadron often refueled and took leave on Bespin.”

 

“To heroes,” Brixie rasps out, raising her glass. They toast, and there is a moment of pensive sipping.

 

It’s Shara who breaks the lull, her voice wobbling ever so slightly. “Terena sent us holos speaking so highly of Captain Solo.” Her smile is strained, but she perseveres. “She always praised his excellent decision making under pressure. A steady hand, she always said.”

 

Rey’s stomach turns so quickly she almost excuses herself, but it’s like watching a catastrophe in slow motion; she cannot look away, and she cannot bear to _not_ hear this.

 

Kes claps a hand on Shara’s shoulder, picking up where she left off. “There were rumors he could use the Force like his mother and uncle, but the only time she mentioned it was to dismiss ‘em,” he says. “Said he was a good captain and a strong leader, and the rest didn’t matter.”

 

Lando nods. “Ben turned out alright, if I dare say so myself.” He leans across the table, catching Shara’s eyes. His voice is quiet and serious when next he speaks. “I’ll let you in on the truth, but you’ve gotta keep it quiet—he’s coming back to Chandrila for a while, now that the fighting’s done.”

 

Gozetta, who has been drinking her wine while staring vacantly at the candles’ dancing flames, perks up, her interest piqued. “Where will he be staying?”

 

Before Lando can answer, Shara cries, “He should stay here with us! It’s the least we can do, to show our appreciation for what he did for…” she trails off, time-worn sorrow spilling across her features.

 

Gently, Lando takes her hand in his. “That’s very generous, dear. But his mother has an apartment in Hanna City, in the diplomatic residency complex. I believe he’s already made plans to stay there.”

 

“Oh,” she murmurs. Nothing more. She slumps back into her chair, eyes riveted to the floral tablecloth.

 

A painful pause; they all look at each other apprehensively.

 

At last, Poe clears his throat. “I’ll get in touch with him, Mom.” Shara’s head snaps up, her eyes hopeful. He elaborates, “I coordinated with him a few times during the war—he’d probably be happy to come over for dinner.”

 

“There you have it!” says Lando, with a satisfied clap of his hands. “Problem solved.”

 

“Yes.” A little color returns to Shara’s face; she brings her wine to her lips and takes a sip. “Yes, a visit for dinner would be nice, I think.”

 

“It will be,” Poe agrees.

 

Rey, having sat in silence through all of this, sees no polite avenue for objecting to such a visit, or abstaining from participating in one. Especially now that she knows the full extent of _his_ connection to the Dameron family.

 

The conversation carries on, but she hears none of it.

 

She can think of nothing but the future; a future that, for the first time in eight years, includes Ben Solo.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After dinner has been finished off and hot chocolate drank, after goodbyes and fare-thee-wells have been exchanged, Gozetta and Rey shrug into their jackets and prepare for the walk back to the bungalow.

 

Brixie extends an offer to escort them back, ‘on account of Poe staying behind to reminisce with General Calrissian’. Although Gozetta mutters in annoyance at what she judges to be Brixie’s presumption, Rey is grateful. The night is dark, the path through the forest winding; she’s perfectly capable of defending herself normally, but at the pleading of Gozetta, is currently absent her quarterstaff. Not to mention, she’s been stumbling all night in her oversized hand-me-down dress.

 

There is barely any moonlight to guide their way, and though Rey carries a glowlamp, its light hardly extends farther than a meter or so in front of them. Carefully, they head home along the sandy trail.

 

“I’m dying to meet Captain Solo,” says Brixie, with a girlish giggle, once the Great House is out of view. “I can’t really talk about him to Poe or my parents, but… I’ve heard so much about him. And—”

 

Yet again, Rey finds herself holding her breath. _Please don’t ask me about him,_ she thinks, hoping Brixie will sense her reluctance. She couldn’t know about Rey and Ben, could she?

 

 _Does_ Poe know? Does Gozetta? She really needs to figure that out, and soon.

 

But Brixie’s thoughts veer in a different direction. “Do you think he’d like me? He seems so… assured, and capable, in his press conferences. I’ve watched all of them.” She sighs, a breathy lovelorn sound. “So bold. I like a bold man. And that scar on his face—I think it just makes him more handsome.”

 

Rey looks to Gozetta for a way out, but her sister has struck out ahead of them on the path, still peeved at the suggestion that she could not find her way home without assistance.

 

“Well? Rey? What do you think? Do I have a chance with him?”

 

Rey snaps her gaze back to Brixie, wounded by the very words, but Brixie doesn’t notice. She merely winks and laughs.

 

For a moment, she really studies the younger woman. Her looks are not dissimilar to Poe’s and his parents; her skin is olive-hued, sun-kissed and glowing. Soft dark ringlets frame her heart-shaped face like a cloud. Warm aged-honey eyes look out from above high cheekbones, a pert nose, full pink lips.

 

Brixie is beautiful. And five years younger than Rey. She’s slim but not worn out the way Rey is; she hasn’t had to hone herself into the sharp tool like Rey has.

 

She still has softness; soft cheeks, soft curls, soft hips and thighs. She’s lovely.

 

Rey blinks back the beginnings of tears, and glances away, into the forest.

 

“You’re very pretty, Brixie. I’m sure anyone can see that,” she says quietly, conceding defeat in her heart. “And I’ve… met Captain Solo. He’ll—” the words must be pushed out, they’re unwilling to leave her lips, like reluctant stragglers at Ergel’s bar, “—be quite won over by you.”

 

 _You’d be a better match for him, too,_ she doesn’t say. _You haven’t broken his heart, you never failed him or betrayed him with your weakness._

 

 _He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t hate you._ She says none of that.

 

“I agree,” Brixie chirps, doing a graceful little twirl around Rey, filled with the enthusiasm of a young heart that hasn’t been broken. “Mom always says I’m a strong, independent woman and I need someone who can deal with that. Who better than a hero of the New Republic?” She resumes her place by Rey’s side. “A famous captain, known for his acumen in battle and his strong principles?”

 

“Right,” is all she can manage to cough out.

 

“He’s _just_ the sort of man I need,” Brixie cheerfully asserts. “And I’m just the sort of woman who’d be good for him.”

 

And really, Rey can think of no argument to that. So she offers none.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The following morning brings more rain, and a slight fever for Gozetta. Nothing Rey says can convince her to rise from her sleeper; she barks out a rattling cough every few minutes, and sneezes just as often. When Rey lays her hand on her sister’s brow, it’s warmer than it ought to be. Finally, at seeing that his wife is likely to be sleeper-ridden for the day, Poe informs them he’s taking the boys to the Great House. Rey readily agrees, and helps see them off.

 

“Oh Goz, I’m sorry,” she sighs, once she’s finished and settled on top of the covers of her sister's sleeper. “How can I help?”

 

A slight sniffle and a dainty sneeze can just barely be heard from beneath the pile of blankets, and then, sounding congested, Gozetta says, “Well, if you really wanted to do something… you _could_ go to Old Hannatown Market and pick up some more manellan jasper tea.”

 

She nods. “Yes. That I can do. Is it alright if I use the airspeeder?”

 

“I don’t see why not,” Gozetta replies, still muffled by blankets.

 

Rey hesitates for only a second before peeling back the covers and pressing a soft kiss against her sister’s brow. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promises.

 

“Well, get going then.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Neon advertiscreens glow orange and cyan and pink through the downpour in the dim winding alleys of the Old Hannatown Market.

 

Banner-strewn lines hang above the narrow passageways, the sigils of various old families fluttering under the deluge. Even dressed in her sister’s fur-lined hooded poncho and rain boots, a shiver passes through Rey. Within a few minutes of parking and locking the airspeeder, her teeth have begun to chatter.

 

And yet, she does not rush. Leisurely, taking in everything, she wanders from stall to stall, alley to alley, marveling at the sheer crush of life in the market, even on a day when most shoppers have chosen to stay home. It’s all so much: the goods and services, all the languages, the voices and the smells and the noise, a steady hum of adverts and conversation and rat-a-tat rainfall.

 

It’s beautiful. Rey knows she could easily meander all afternoon, just taking it in. But the cold and the wet gets to her more quickly than she’d like to admit, so she ducks under the roof of a noodle stall, planting herself on a hard steel stool in front of its long counter. Behind it, a four-armed Ardennian is doing five or six things at once, cooking noodles and frying various components and still joking around with some of the customers, who are obviously regulars.

 

Sal, they all call him.

 

He doesn’t so much notice her as he does wave unceremoniously in her direction with one of his hands. “What’ll you have?” he barks out, in a gruff voice befitting his wizened simian face.

 

“Uh, what’s… good?” She scans the menu; most of the items, she’s never even heard of before.

 

Now he looks at her, perhaps unaccustomed to patrons who don’t have their favorite order memorized. He blinks disbelievingly a few times. “Phazik meat, peanuts and vegetables with garlic sauce,” he tells her, none of his hands pausing their labors. “That’s the most popular bowl.”

 

“Right. One of those, please.”

 

He smirks. “Comin’ right up, cutie.”

 

Rey bites her lip at the offhand compliment. It was just a courtesy. Still, it’s nice to think that someone might still find her… decent-looking. Contentedly, she contemplates buying some sort of thank you gift for Poe and Gozetta while she waits for her noodles.

 

Beyond the overhang of the stall, the rain continues falling in sheets. A few drenched shoppers hurry past. The air smells of ozone and wet stone and hot oil. A few minutes later, a bowl is plunked down in front of her, its garlicky aroma wafting up at her in a cloud of steam. Her mouth waters. Without hesitation, she plucks a pair of grub-sticks from a dispenser on the counter. Then, awkwardly, having never used the tools before, she digs in.

 

It is not until she is halfway finished and mid-slurp, the end of a glass noodle dangling from her pursed lips like a wriggling nightwatcher worm’s tail, that she spots him. Maybe five meters up the alley, standing at a stall selling chronometers with his back to her. A black umbrella in one hand, the other pointing at something behind the Pantoran merchant’s head.

 

 _It might not be him,_ she tells herself. The black waves of his hair reach a broad set of shoulders, and the man’s build, from what she can tell, is every bit as solid and strong as she remembers _his_ being, but what does that mean, really? It’s a big planet. It’s a big galaxy. Surely, there are lots of men with dark hair and strapping bodies.

 

And there are some differences. Those dark locks are shot through with silver, and combed back neatly against his scalp. _He_ never wore it like that.

 

That styling reveals a large set of ears, though.

 

Just like his.

 

 _No_ , she scolds herself. They’re just ears. Anyone’s ears. And the man is not dressed in spicerunning attire; he’s not covered in grease stains from what she can see, nor, she imagines, is there a blaster pistol holstered to one thigh. But then, he wouldn’t wear that anymore, would he? He’s a Captain now. Those broad shoulders strain like boulders at the seams of a grey wool coat that sweeps down to the back of his knees. Hands gloved in black leather peek out from the coat’s sleeves, and below the coat, long thick calves are protected from the rain by black leather boots.

 

Rey has been staring at him for entirely too long; the noodle is cold by the time she gathers her wits about her and slurps the rest of it up into her mouth. She manages to swallow a few spoonfuls of thick broth but before she can stop herself, her eyes are drawn to the man again. He’s almost finished his transaction with the vendor. She can tell because the Pantoran is wrapping up what appears to be an antique wooden chrono. A second more, and it is passed across the stall. The man tucks it under his arm, dipping his head in a polite nod.

 

Then he turns.

 

It’s him.

 

_It’s him, it’s him, it’s him._

 

Even across an alley shrouded in a veil of rainfall, Rey recognizes that proud beak of a nose. His face hasn’t changed so much as she’d envisioned. A few lines around his mouth show the beginnings of age; perhaps they come from laughing and smiling. Signs of a happy, full life. Yet shadows under his dark eyes would contradict that theory. Frown lines, then, perhaps. A long-healed scar originates above his right brow, passing over the bridge of his nose and resuming its journey from tear duct to jaw, then down his neck, beneath the black tunic he wears under his coat.

 

It is a serious face. Severe, almost.

 

And yet, he’s even more handsome than her memory of him. Where once something wild seemed to thrum just under the surface, where his dark eyes burned, now they are steely and cool and dignified; now his features have finally settled into that impenetrable stoicism he was always attempting to don.

 

Shrugging his shoulders up to his ears, ensuring that the wrapped chrono is firmly wedged between his flank and his arm, he sets off in the direction of the noodle stall. Towards _her_. Rey can scarcely breathe.

 

And then, without ever once looking in her direction, he passes it. She watches, transfixed, as he walks away from her, tracking him by the breadth of his shoulders and his black umbrella and his towering height until finally, he disappears around a corner and is gone.

 

Gone, again. And here she has sat, watching it happen. Bereft of the courage she might have had a lifetime ago, when she was young and untrampled and fierce— when she might have leapt up from her stool and sprinted across the alley, spun him around, pulled him into her arms, begged him to forget Jakku. Insisted they try again.

 

It’s been almost a decade since Rey opened herself up to the Force. Not since that last time she felt his fear and his heartache and his disappointment has she allowed herself to access it, and she is not about to change that now.

 

But maybe she would, if she thought she might be able to glean what he’s thinking, even just a glimpse.

 

Her appetite has vanished. After flinging a few credit ingots onto the counter and giving a half-hearted wave to Sal, Rey pulls up the hood of her poncho and braces herself to head back into the cold rain.

 

After all— despite whether Ben Solo cares about her or even remembers her— there is still tea to be bought, and a sick sister who needs tending.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, after they’ve had their tea and sniffled their way through some melodramatic romantic holofilm together and Rey has hugged her sister, gently, her heart full to bursting when Gozetta drowsily returns the embrace, she slips from the house. The rain has stopped. The humid air still holds a chill, a stiff breeze rushes in off the water.

 

But Rey’s entire body is aflame.

 

The beach is compacted from the day’s deluge; so it is with less stumbling than usual that she makes her way down to the foamy water’s edge. A glance behind her reveals her footprints in the wet sand and beyond, the house, its windows all darkened. Poe and the children are most likely still at the Great House. Some unknown insects chirrup from the towering trees, their melody blending with the song of the sea.

 

At loose ends for the first time since she’s arrived, she decides to walk. For a while, ten minutes or maybe fifteen or maybe thirty, Rey drifts down the beach. She thinks about Jakku’s sand compared to Chandrila’s, she thinks about noodles and garlic, she even thinks about the drama’s tearjerking final act, in which the dashing hero earnestly confessed his love to the beautiful scarlet-hued Twi’lek heroine.

 

And that thought, of course, leads her to him. Would that real life worked the way it does in holodramas, would that he had come back to her in tears, on his knees, rejecting her rejection, committed to fight for her.

 

“Real life doesn’t work that way,” she whispers, an admonishment.

 

Kicking off her boots and leaving them behind her, she lets the waves lap at her bare feet and ankles. The sky sinks from silver into sterling into slate, darkening with nightfall. Still she walks. She’s sweating, can feel the rivulets rolling down her neck, beneath her sweater, between her breasts.

 

It’s possible she’s caught whatever virus plagues her sister. Maybe she’s in the throes of a fever. Or maybe… maybe it’s the mad cyclone of her thoughts that has sent her body into a tailspin. Maybe her toes curl into the sand from her residual shame over a mistake made when she was still a teenager; maybe her shortness of breath is because every time she replays the moment she saw his face in that alley earlier, his cheek is unscarred and his lip is curled with the same disgusted sneer he wore the last time she saw him on Jakku.

 

All her life, Rey has forgiven. Trespass after trespass, betrayal after betrayal. In her heart there exists a bottomless well, from which those who hurt her have drawn, again and again.

 

When will _she_ be forgiven? When can she forgive herself?

 

“What of my heart?” she asks to no one, to the churning sea, to the dark forest at her back.

 

Her only answer is the roar of the waves, the whisper of the trees, the chirping of the insects.

 

It’s not good enough. She yanks off the poncho, then her tunic and her undershirt, then her trousers, tossing them carelessly higher up on the beach, out of reach of the waves. Clad in only a threadbare pair of underwear, she ventures further into the surf.

 

The water is frigid and bracing; it clears her head, it clears her fever. Her teeth are chattering again by the time she’s up to her waist, but she’s thankful for that. Her hands aren’t clammy anymore, her stomach has finally relented its ceaseless churning. She can’t think about him in his captain’s coat and shiny black boots, can’t think about the headlines that reported his heroic deeds, can’t think about his handsome face, can’t think about his body; all she can think about is the cold.

 

Just a bit further.

 

When the water laps at her clavicles, she stops. The waves push and pull at her. Ebb. Flow. Whoosh, swish, shurr. Bits of orange flame lick at the denim clouds before the last of the light drains from the sky. Then, at last, when night has completely descended…

 

Rey unlocks her knees and lets her head slip beneath the waves, giving herself a brief baptism in the dark and the cold. Just for a moment, just long enough to lose her sense of everything, before she must be returned to the world.

 

Calm washes over her, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A wild Captain Ben Solo appears! Some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa style: [ Ardennians](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ardennian), [ Pantorans](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pantoran). [Kes Dameron](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kes_Dameron%22), [Shara Bey](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shara_Bey).
> 
> SO MANY PLACES! [Chandra](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chandra), [Chandrakant](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chandrakant), [Hanna City Spaceport](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hanna_City_Spaceport), the [Silver Sea](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Silver_Sea), [Yavin 4](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yavin_4), [Vetine](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vetine), and [Old Hannatown Market](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Hannatown_Market).
> 
> Transport? [Cargo hauler](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cargo_hauler), [the Dameron family airspeeder aka a space minivan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/EasyRide_passenger_airspeeder/Legends). What's a [skylane](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skylane)?
> 
> How does [galactic standard time measurement](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar) work?
> 
> Materials! What is [duracrete](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Duracrete), [steelstone](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Steelstone), [cerillium](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cerillium), [fibrolite](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fibrolite)? How about some wearable ones, like [phil-fiber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Phil-fiber), [fleekskin](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fleekskin), [aeien silk](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Aeien_silk), and [silkweed](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Silkweed)?
> 
> Technology? We've got the [identichip](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Identichip), [advertiscreen](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Advertiscreen), [nanowave stove](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nanowave_stove), and [glareshades](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Glareshades)!
> 
> Some cool trees: [tintolive](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tintolive_tree), [koyo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Koyo_\(tree\)), and [uneti](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Uneti_tree)
> 
> Let's talk about sustenance! This chapter has so much food and drink, including: [manellan jasper tea](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Manellan_Jasper), [nerf jerky](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Meat_jerky), [brestel nuts](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Brestel_nut), [koyo fruit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Koyo_fruit), [shroomchips](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shroomchip), [blue-milk cheese](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blue-milk_cheese), [marmal-fish](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Marmal-fish) [native to Chandrila], [Naboo lettuce](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Naboo_lettuce), [daro root](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Daro_root), [nerf ribs](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nerf_ribs), [brekka beets](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Brekka_beet), [space hot chocolate](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hot_chocolate), [space noodles](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Noodle), [sparklemint sticks](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sparklemint_stick), [fizzer-sweets](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fizzer-sweet), [stormfruit candy](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Stormfruit_candy), [carbosyrup](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Carbosyrup), and [beer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Beer)! [Yes, really!]
> 
> And last not but really, does the gffa have [umbrellas](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Umbrella)? Yes!
> 
> I actually have a bajillion more notes but they didn't fit up here, so I'll add them in a comment below. 😂 Otherwise, that's all from me. Thank you for reading! ❤


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It is over! It is over!" she repeated to herself again and again, in nervous gratitude. "The worst is over!" —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note up here at the top to say that there has been some absolutely gorgeous art drawn for this fic! Many, many thanks to [tm2taughtmefamlaw](https://twitter.com/tm2taughtmefam1) for accepting my request and perfectly capturing [young Rey and Ben doing some sexy shooting practice on Jakku](https://twitter.com/tm2taughtmefam1/status/1087265045132627970), and [selina](https://twitter.com/selunchen) for her magnificent rendering of [Captain Umbrella Solo](https://twitter.com/selunchen/status/1088896842186833920), from last chapter! They are both so, so, beautiful, thank you again friends! 💗

**42 ABY.**

 

The days begin to blur together, in a way that Rey finds she doesn’t mind. One day, then two, and then before she knows it, almost a week has passed. A morning here being guided around the factory room floor by Brixie, whose eyes shine with excitement as she details the many parts and models in various stages of production; a day there spent with Gozetta and Poe and the children on Sarini Island, where they visit a zoo full of so many animals it makes Rey’s head spin. One afternoon spent helping Brixie and Kes with the beehives they keep at the far end of the orchard, harvesting honey and wax. Caf and breakfast with her sister and the Damerons most mornings; dinners together once or twice. Long hours whiled away on the beach, the waves crashing at her feet as she stares out at the Silver Sea.

 

How much she has missed, hiding away on Jakku all those years.

 

The weather takes a turn, the air grows almost… crisp. It’s unlike any kind of cold Rey has felt before.

 

“The end of the harvest always lines up with the beginning of the cold season,” Gozetta explains one morning, distractedly. She’s seated at the dining table with the boys, just beginning to teach Little Poe his Aurebesh; with a faint smile, she oversees his clumsy attempts at writing the characters.

 

“Careful, dearest,” she says, wrapping her hand around his to correct his form. “Mustn’t forget that Yirt has a little tail tucked inside.”

 

Weir, scrawling wildly on his own durasheet slate, cackles at his older brother’s mistake. When he is tsked at simultaneously by his aunt and mother, he falls into a momentary sulk before returning to his scribbles. Rey sinks into the old sofa across the room and pulls out her sketchbook to capture the moment. The day slips away.

 

Another morning, a few days later, brings unseasonably warm air and a bright clear sky, so Gozetta and Rey take the boys down to the beach for a breakfast picnic. Side by side the sisters sit, on an old blanket, sharing caf and crumblebuns. After a bout of top-secret plotting, Weir and Little Poe begin construction; in a frenzy, they scoop up sand with their plasticine buckets.

 

“What do you wager they’re building?” Rey asks, feeling lighthearted. It comes easily on a day like this, with her sister and her nephews and the sun and the sea; there’s enough to be happy about that she can almost forget her worries. For a little while, anyway.

 

“Castle,” answers Gozetta, without looking up from her datapad. “‘S’always a castle.”

 

Sure enough, when Rey glances back at the small mountain of sand the boys have collected, one particular lump rises up in a misshapen turret, and she thinks she spies the early diggings of what will be a moat.

 

“You have to admit, Goz… it’s a perfect day. And those are two _very_ happy boys,” she says. “This is a good life they have, here.” Leaning back on her elbows, she lets her head dip behind her. Quietly, contented, she soaks up the sun’s warmth.

 

“Hmph. It’ll be a nightmare getting them to wash up later,” is her sister’s grumbled reply.

 

“Oh, _Goz_.”

 

“Am I wrong?”

 

“Am I?” she counters.

 

“…No,” admits Gozetta. Rey opens her eyes to find her gazing down the beach at Little Poe and Weir; there’s a softness in her expression that she rarely allows anyone to see.

 

Another sound mixes with the waves and the boy’s laughter, that of feet treading with difficulty through sifting sand. Rey doesn’t look away from Gozetta; for a long moment, Gozetta doesn’t look away from her sons. When their eyes finally meet, they share a smile.

 

“Good morning girls!” Brixie calls out, as she approaches the blanket. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”

 

Gozetta merely grunts, so Rey angles her head back to greet her. “Morning, Brixie. Have you got work today?”

 

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, flopping onto the blanket behind them. “Just stopping by to say hello on my way in. Also, I wanted to make sure Goz told you the news.” She arches one dark brow. “Has she?”

 

Rey frowns. “I’m not… sure.” She looks towards her sister, arching her own brow. “Have you?”

 

“Ugh, I was going to,” Gozetta says, exasperated. “I just woke up ten minutes ago, didn’t I?”

 

“Try thirty,” she teases. The words fall on deaf ears; Gozetta has turned back to her datapad and obstinately resumed her reading.

 

“Oh, nevermind her—I’ll tell you myself.” Brixie snatches a crumblebun from their basket, ignoring Gozetta’s irritated huff, then dips it in Rey’s mug of caf without asking. “So,” she says, chewing, “Poe got in touch with Captain Solo, who’s officially back on-world, and he’s going to come for dinner on Friday!”

 

Mentally, Rey tries to calculate what day it is now. Monday, she comes up with; she’s almost certain today is a Monday.

 

“You’ll come, right? You have to, Rey! I mean, didn’t you tell me that you’ve met him?”

 

Rey catches the sharp look Gozetta casts her way, perhaps hurt that this is the first she’s hearing of any such acquaintance. She winces.

 

“Yes… but…” she sputters, flailing for a way out, “Isn’t the evening more about your parents? And—” She stops just short of referencing Terena, well aware of how much it can pain a person to hear the name of someone they’ve lost.

 

“Well yeah, but we’re always happy to have you around.” Brixie’s tone is coaxing, her smile only slightly dimmed by the spectre of her sister. “You have to, really! I’ll miss you too much if you don’t.” With that, she gives Rey a cheerful pout.

 

Rey sighs. “Of course, if you _want_ me there, I—”

 

“Great!” She jumps up, stealing one last dunk of her crumblebun in Rey’s caf. After she’s crammed it in her mouth, she wipes the sand off her leggings. “And we’ll be happy if you’re there too, Goz,” she adds, belatedly.

 

Gozetta glares up at her.

 

“Anyway,” she lilts, drawing out both ‘a’s for effect, “Gotta jet. Droids to build, and a wedding with Captain Solo to plan!”

 

Rey sucks in a sharp breath that Brixie doesn’t notice; she’s already thrown a wink their way and turned, ambling across the beach in the direction of the path back to the Great House.

 

“Insufferable brat,” Gozetta hisses, under her breath.

 

“Oh _hush_ , Goz.”

 

Rey’s voice sounds faint, to her own ears. Winded. Gozetta's expression turns wounded, but she doesn’t retract her admonishment. Instead, she shifts back to watch her nephews perfect their driftwood drawbridge.

 

Her sister is more tentative when she ventures: “You knew Captain Solo?”

 

“It was a long time ago.”

 

A pause. “In any case…” For once in her life, Gozetta seems to pick up on Rey’s sentiments, and lets it lie. “That girl is no match for him. Not by a long shot.”

 

Rey shakes her head. “She’s just young and excited,” she murmurs. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

That afternoon, Gozetta insists on dragging her into town. She’s surprisingly competent at handling the airspeeder. Conservative, in fact, when compared to Rey or Poe; she keeps it in first gear for most of the ride. They head not towards Old Hannatown, the only part of the city Rey knows, but towards the shining skyscrapers downtown. After they’ve parked on one of the landing pads amid the towering steel-and-glass structures, Gozetta— side-eying the quarterstaff Rey has insisted on bringing— herds her inside the mall.

 

Rey knows her mouth is gaping as they pass by the store windows within, but she cannot help it; each window display’s mannequin is adorned in attire more sumptuous and lavish than the last.

 

“This is… a marketplace?” she asks, not knowing where to direct her eyes. Her sister ignores the question, which is fine by Rey, since she's preoccupied with taking it all in.

 

There's plenty to absorb: shoppers of various species milling around, light jizz music emanating from hidden speakers in the walls, kiosks selling cosmetics and jewelry and portable tech, and as they approach the heart of the mall, a bubbling fountain, ringed by lush plants and surrounded by a bench-filled courtyard. The smell of hot food drifts out of a cafeteria. There is an echoing quality to the space, like that of a large, high-ceilinged cavern. It sets her slightly on edge, reminding her of the old Starship Graveyard docking bays.

 

But the _clothes_.

 

Silks and brocarts, linens and leathers, cottons and furs, synthetic materials she’s never even seen before; more varieties of material and color and print than she could’ve imagined in her wildest dreams. And the garments? Every conceivable style.

 

“Here!”

 

Gozetta tugs on her elbow, bringing her into an alarmingly austere boutique; bare white walls accentuate the fact that only a dozen items are being sold, and all of them look very expensive. Rey checks a couple tags and is disheartened to find herself proven right: every item in the place is laughably outside her meager price range.

 

“Look how fine this dress is, Rey,” Gozetta purrs, holding up a shimmering emerald green gown for her inspection. “Imagine how the color would bring out your eyes! You _must_ try it on. And ma-a-aybe we should buy a little makeup, while we’re out… you’ve got some bird’s feet around your—”

 

“Goz,” she interrupts, as she checks the tag dangling from the gown’s right sleeve. “This costs about half of what we got for the bar. I don’t have that kind of money.” She shrugs, tapping her quarterstaff nervously on the shiny white floor. “I barely have any money.”

 

“Just try it on.”

 

Rey sighs. “This place is… nice, but isn’t there somewhere we can buy fabric? I’ll make my own clothes.”

 

“What, by _hand_?” Gozetta asks, eyes cutting towards her. She looks offended by the very suggestion.

 

“…Yes, of course.”

 

Gozetta gazes longingly at the gown for a moment, still rubbing the fabric of the sleeve between her fingers. “Oh, right,” she finally says, sounding distant. “I remember that, about you. Your—” her lip curls, words dripping with disdain, “—homemade clothes, on Jakku.”

 

“How else was I supposed to clothe myself?” Rey presses her own lips into a thin line, willing herself for the hundredth time not to take offense at Gozetta’s callousness.

 

Her sister does not answer right away. Instead, she screws up her shoulders, seemingly coming to a decision. Then she drops the sleeve and takes Rey by the elbow again, marching her out of the shop and towards the exit. Glancing around furtively, she grumbles, “Fine. _Fine_.” A sigh of her own, and a softening of her voice, then: “Don’t tell Poe, but… I have an idea.”

 

They pass through glass doors back onto the spacious landing pad. Beneath them, speeders of all sort race along skylanes. “We’ll rent a tailor-droid for a few days to help you, hm?” She hops in their airspeeder, then turns to Rey after she’s done the same. “But you have to keep it hidden in your room.”

 

“Why aren’t we telling Poe?” Rey places her quarterstaff on the backseat, her head tilted with suspicion.

 

“Ugh,” is Gozetta’s droll response. “He says the harvest was less fruitful than he and… _Kes_ … had hoped. It’ll be a tight year. Supposedly.” She dons a pair of glareshades, checking herself in one of the airspeeder’s mirrors before adding: “But really, who knows. He’s as bad with money as I am, to be perfectly honest.”

 

“In that case, I can’t ask you to—”

 

Gozetta’s tone turns haughty and incensed; she sounds like she’s doing her best impression of Verla. “I will _not_ have my sister meeting Chandrilan society in handstitched rags! I won’t. What would Ma have said? What would Pa think?”

 

“He wouldn’t care,” Rey mutters. “It’s me we’re talking about.” Unable to meet her sister’s eyes, she looks out across the pad, watching the transports come and go.

 

“I care. _I_ care.”

 

Rey turns back to see Gozetta baring her teeth as she speaks, a surefire sign she’s incensed. “You look like a damned desert rat, walking around in your rags, carrying that stupid stick—”

 

“Quarterstaff,” Rey corrects.

 

“Quarter-staff, half-staff, three-fourths staff—I don’t give a bantha shit!” She slaps the console for emphasis. “You’re not bringing it to dinner with Captain Solo—” She wags a finger in Rey’s face, giving a violent shake of her head when Rey opens her mouth to protest. “No, don’t even try it. You are _not_.”

 

“Goz—” she tries, soft, as if appealing to a cranky child.

 

Gozetta lifts her chin up. “I am your sister, am I not?”

 

“You are.”

 

“Then let me be sisterly, and stop being so damned binary about everything,” she growls. “Besides, the droid and the fabric will still be cheaper than buying from those boutiques, if that’s your hang-up.”

 

She starts the airspeeder then maneuvers it out over the landing pad, carefully merging into a busy skylane.

 

“So you see,” she says, as she navigates towards less shiny and towering parts of the city, “I’ve _actually_ made a very prudent choice. You should be congratulating me for my cleverness!” She pauses only as long as it takes to draw breath. “You’re worse than Verla, Rey, I swear—the both of you, so stubborn, never appreciating my efforts…”

 

And that is as Gozetta a claim as she’s ever made, as if the truth is not that she’s three times more stubborn and willfully obtuse than anyone else in the family. But Rey recognizes an olive branch when she’s being handed one; her sister is _trying_. It means more to her than words can express, so she merely says:

 

“Yes all _right_ , my deepest apologies. Let’s find a droid rental, then?”

 

Gozetta’s smile is dazzling, on the rare occasion she chooses to employ it; her whole face lights up, her cheeks dimple becomingly.

 

“Let’s!” she crows.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey favors the neutral desert tones and hardy but soft fabrics that helped her survive life as a salvager on Jakku; Gozetta, accustomed to the more glamorous styles of Chandrila, continuously demands she add color and glamor to her selections. It takes a few hours and a dozen shops to purchase all the supplies she’ll need. In the end, after much back and forth, the sisters manage to reach something of a compromise on her new wardrobe.

 

A bolt of black govath-wool for a heavy winter coat, Rey’s choice. Emerald green Fleuréline weave for an evening gown, a concession to Gozetta. Simple coarseweave for trousers and tunics, in dark shades of Tuanulberry blue and garnet and juniper, agreed upon by both sisters. And a handful of other fabrics and details, each one a complicated negotiation.

 

Finally, it is finished. The materials bought, the tailor-droid rented, all of it secreted away in her guest room where they know Poe will not venture; Gozetta declares the afternoon a success and herself in desperate need of a nap, much to Rey’s relief.

 

Sketchbook and some pencils in hand, she sets out from the bungalow. Not knowing where she’s headed exactly, she takes a wide path through the woods— avoiding the Great House, surprisingly in need of the solitude that had haunted her for most of her life— until she emerges from the trees at the back-end of the orchard.

 

There is a curious tree there, incongruous from both the koyos and the Chandrilan pines. Uneti, Shara had called it. A Force tree. It is massive, its bark smoother and redder than that of the others. It stands taller and wider as well, and bears no leaves or fruit. Just long bare limbs and branches, like a person made plant.

 

Rey seats herself cross-legged beneath it, her back resting against its trunk, and opens her sketchbook.

 

It’s so quiet here that she can hear the faint buzzing of the bees and the rustle of leaves dancing in the wind. And something else, something not entirely natural… a subtle hum that she thinks might be coming from the tree. It should be off-putting, that hum, but for some reason Rey doesn’t mind it. Maybe because it is not invasive in the way her fumbling exploration of the Force with _him_ sometimes was; it is only welcoming, only lulling.

 

She sets her pencil to the paper. Her first subject: the orchard and in the distance, the Great House. Gentle rolling hills, carefully lined with now-fruitless but still lush leafy koyo trees. The Great House’s shining white walls, the steep slope of its dark green roof. Once satisfied, she turns the page.

 

Next she draws the branches of the uneti above her head. Twisted like corkscrews yet smooth, reaching up towards the warm yellow sun.

 

A bird lands in the grass before her, almost as if nominating itself to be recorded for posterity. Her final sketch, she decides. It picks at the pits of fallen and rotting koyo fruits, its black plumage starred with white, its delicate body so far removed from Jakku’s scavenging birds of prey that Rey wonders if they could even be counted as distant relations.

 

It’s lovely, though. She draws it with care.

 

The sun glides across the sky as she works, and Rey regains the calm she felt that night she threw herself in the ocean. She thinks of his face, drawn on a postcard she keeps under her pillow. Not paying attention, lost in a daydream, she begins to draw that face beside the bird and the uneti branches.

 

When she notices the profile taking shape, she nearly throws her pencil away in alarm.

 

 _You have to let him go,_ she tells herself. _You did it before, you can do it again._

 

 _ **Don’t,**_ says a voice deep within that is not her own.

 

Unsettled, she pushes herself up. The tree remains exactly as it was when she first saw it, unmoving and innocuous. With a shake of her head, Rey turns and heads home, choosing the shorter path through the orchard, the one that takes her past the Great House. And as she nears the veranda, she can see that Poe and Brixie are relaxing there, sharing a glass of koyo wine.

 

They are not alone.

 

There’s a third person— wide shoulders filling out an indigo blue sweater, ramrod straight posture, and a dark head of hair like a mane— seated with his back to her. She freezes, knowing at once who it is.

 

But it’s too late; Brixie has spotted her. “Rey!” she cries cheerfully, giving a wave. “Fancy meeting you here! I’ve just gotten off work. Maker, what a long one it was!” As Rey rounds the corner of the veranda, coming face to face with the Damerons and their guest, Brixie picks up an empty wine glass and dangles it in Rey’s direction. “Wanna sit with us for a while? Have a glass?”

 

Before Rey can answer, Brixie tilts her head in _his_ direction. “Remember Captain Solo?”

 

Rey takes a deep breath, then forces herself to look at Ben. “Hullo,” she mumbles.

 

He sits stiff, motionless, his face pointed resolutely in Poe’s direction. Only for an instant does he let his eyes slide towards her— blink and you’d miss it— as if the sight of her is too repellent for his gaze to linger. His response to her is the very definition of the cold shoulder; the only sign that he gives of even acknowledging she exists is a curt nod towards Brixie, which could more easily be interpreted as an affirmation of her  question.

 

So this is what she means to him, now. First she feels heat blossoming along her neck and cheeks, her humiliation suffusing her with fever; she is tired, she is sweaty, she is somewhat bedraggled from a long day. Not that he even cares enough to look at her, _really_ look at her. That brings on a chill: his non-greeting wracks through her, freezing everything within, making her chest seize up.

 

No amount of credits in the whole galaxy could entice her to keep standing there, let alone invite more coldness from _him_ by joining their informal gathering.

 

She recalls Gozetta’s plan, of her being dressed in shimmering emerald green for the dinner on Friday. It had held a certain appeal to her, after some convincing; she would look her best when he finally saw her again. Not as she is today, in clothes cut from the same cloth of those she wore eight years ago.

 

 _Desert rat,_ her sister had said. _Dressed in rags._

 

The unfairness of it all strikes at her, again and again.

 

He looks so handsome in that blue sweater and his dark fitted trousers and well-shined boots, his angular features only made more distinguished-looking by the passage of time, his dark hair as becoming with streaks of sterling coming in at the temples as it was in his shaggy youth. She feels as old and withered as the nightbloomer bouquet that rests in its tin box, hidden in the guest room closet.

 

She has mere moments to escape before the tears come.

 

“I… have to go,” she gasps, clutching the sketchbook to her chest. “I’m sorry.”

 

Brixie doesn’t seem to notice her distress, distracted as she is by the Captain. She gazes at him with stars in her eyes, a dreamy smile playing at her pink lips.

 

“Another time,” she says, distractedly.

 

Poe is frowning at her, his brow furrowed. Perhaps meaning to comfort her, he says, “We’ll all be together on Friday, anyway.”

 

 _Get out of here,_ scream her instincts. There was a time when Rey’s response might have been to fight rather than to flee; that time has passed.

 

Poe’s frown deepens, at the emotions flitting across Rey’s face or at the Captain’s pointed snub, she doesn’t know. “You okay?” he checks.

 

“Long day,” is all she can manage, already backing away slowly from the balustrade. “See you later.”

 

He nods, but still appears concerned. Not once, before Rey finally turns and all but scurries away, does the _Captain_ look at her again. His eyes remain fixed on Brixie, who’s already struck up a playful polemic about some restaurant in Hanna City.

 

“It’s over,” Rey whispers to herself, arms hugging her own waist tightly as she stumbles home through the woods. “It’s over. You saw him, you survived him. You’re fine.”

 

Deep breaths, in and out. She hears nothing but the ringing in her ears, the agitated thundering of her heart. Her palms are damp; her legs tremble. Finally, she stops to rest against a boulder, brushing away the traitorous tears that have slipped free.

 

“You’re okay,” she chants. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Though she digs in her heels for the rest of the week, trying to stick to the most boring and mundane of activities so that time might pass more slowly, Friday evening arrives all the same.

 

The tailor-droid has worked practically non-stop, and most of her new wardrobe is finished. According to Gozetta, it is a paltry collection, but Rey is now in possession of more clothing than she has ever owned in her life. With every garment laid out on the guest sleeper, she feels like a pirate queen surveying her plunder. Carefully, clad in only a set of new kelpcotton underwear and brassiere, she lifts each and drapes it over her front, then spins to study the effect in the mirrored closet door.

 

Her hands are shaking.

 

In less than an hour, she’ll see him. And it will be as it was the other day; he won’t look at her, they won’t speak. But she’s prepared now: she’ll be wearing something new and nice, her face washed, her hair clean and neatly braided. She doesn’t have the vitality she once had, maybe, but she’ll look presentable. And what’s more, she’ll be ready for his indifference; it won’t be the brutal slap in the face that it was before.

 

Just as she’s settled on a soft sage-hued tunic, belted, over dark wool leggings, and is attempting to massage the lines out of the skin around her eyes, an earsplitting shriek shatters the chirruping serenity of twilight.

 

She rushes out into the main room, where Poe is bustling in from the beachside door, carrying a limp Weir in his arms. Gingerly, he lowers the boy onto the sofa. Gozetta, dressed in a rumpled gemweb gown, hovers over them. She’s in hysterics, hiccuping with the force of her sobs; it was clearly her shriek that Rey heard. After passing around the sofa, Rey takes one of Gozetta’s hands in her own before leaning in to inspect her nephew. His little face is pale, eyes closed. He’s breathing, but the breaths are shallow and wheezy. They sound pained.

 

“Goz?” she asks. “What hap—”

 

“Oh, Rey,” she wails, then turns to bury her face in Rey’s shoulder. “He and Little Poe were playing in the gazebo. And he—he—”

 

“Wanted to prove to his big brother that he could climb, too,” Poe finishes, his voice somber and fearful. “Fell off the roof.”

 

Rey looks around for Little Poe and spies him lingering by the hallway, his shirt clenched in nervous fists. Tears pour freely down his ruddy cheeks.

 

He squeaks out, “Aunt Rey, I’m—”

 

“Shh,” she soothes, beckoning him over with her free arm. He approaches timidly, afraid of rebuke, but she simply picks him up. “Only an accident, love,” she murmurs, and he buries his face in her other shoulder, crying as bitterly as his mother.

 

Time seems to speed up then, because there is a panicked flurry of activity; Rey takes the airspeeder to hire a medidroid from the closest medcenter in Hanna City while Gozetta and Poe watch over the boy, and RIC-920 is sent to the Great House to fetch everyone, a precaution demanded by an inconsolable Gozetta.

 

Night has completely fallen by the time Rey returns with the droid. She enters the bungalow to find the Damerons and Gozetta sitting crowded in a fretful semi-circle around the boy. He’s awake but glassy-eyed, lying still; they take turns patting his hair and whispering their worries to one another.

 

The droid’s examination takes no more than ten minutes: a bit of prodding, some scans done first with a medisensor and then an encephaloscanner, a few curt questions put to Weir in its mechanical unfeeling way. Then it nods its head, satisfied with its diagnosis.

 

“Is it his spine?” Gozetta blurts out, voice quavering, when it turns to face them.

 

“ _Negative_ ,” the droid replies. “ _Fracture one: right clavicle. Fracture two: small proximal phalanx of the right hand. Slight concussion_.”

 

“Phalanx?” Rey puzzles.

 

Gozetta scoffs. “His pinky finger.” Poe looks at her, his eyes wide, eyebrows raised. The surprised expression is mirrored in his parents’ and Brixie’s faces; Rey fears her own probably looks the same.

 

“What?” she snaps. “I know things, too!”

 

“But what does that mean for Weir?” Shara asks the droid in a breathless gasp.

 

Without preamble, the droid reels off its prescription: “ _Treatment for fractured bones: bacta. Patient is too young for tank. Alternate solution: fourteen milliliters bactade ingested orally once an hour for the next twelve hours._ ” Here it pauses to withdraw a vial filled with blue liquid from its medkit before continuing: “ _Treatment for symptom of: pain. Medication, non-sedative painkiller. Dosage: one ampule every six hours, or as needed. Treatment for concussion: medication, antishock. Dosage: two ampules._ ”

 

At this, it reaches back into the medkit and rummages for a moment, before retrieving the prescribed meds. Then it hands the ampules and the vial of bactade to Rey, who is standing closest.

 

“ _Taken with water_ ,” it adds, almost an afterthought. “ _On a full stomach_.”

 

Rey nods. “Thank you.” Relieved, she turns to face the Damerons. “That’s not so bad then, is it?”

 

“N-no,” Shara sighs. “Thank the maker.”

 

Kes wipes some errant tears from the corners of his eyes and clears his throat. He crouches to press a soft kiss to his grandson’s forehead before addressing the droid. “I guess you need someone to take you back, huh?”

 

“ _Affirmative_ ,” is the droid’s monotone reply.

 

“Dad,” says Poe, “I can—”

 

“I got it,” Kes assures him, already leading the droid out the door. “You just worry about your boy.”

 

After Little Poe is calmed down and tucked into his sleeper, after Weir’s medication is administered and he is made as comfortable as possible on the sofa, after Shara is satisfied that he will live through the night and she and Brixie have returned home; Poe, Gozetta, and Rey hold an impromptu forum at the dinner table.

 

“We should cancel with Solo,” Poe begins, casting nervous glances back at the sofa, where Weir sips from his glass of koyo juice while quietly watching a holotoon.

 

“But he’s _fine_.” Gozetta wrings her hands, seemingly over the worst of her shock and desperate now in a different way, afraid of missing out on the evening’s entertainments. “The bactade will fix him up soon enough. We can give Rick instructions to keep him awake while we’re gone, until the antishock takes care of the concussion.”

 

“ _Or_ we can just reschedule,” Poe mutters.

 

“Captain Solo is a busy man! Who knows when he’ll be able to come visit next?”

 

Rey studies her own hands, clasped in her lap, surreptitiously comparing them with her sister’s. Both are slim, but where Rey’s are bony, the backs traversed by prominent blue veins, Gozetta’s are fuller, unravaged by a lifetime of hard labor, absent the calluses that mar Rey’s palms and the pads of her fingers. She doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes, and she doesn’t contribute to the discussion.

 

“ _Fine_.” Poe’s fists land heavily on the table, frustration evident in his voice. “I’ll stay here, and you two go.”

 

“Absolutely not,” comes Gozetta’s rapidfire reply; when Rey looks up, her eyes are blazing. “What will your parents think of me? Oh, Gozetta the spoiled beast, wining and dining with the hero of the New Republic while Poe the Martyr stays home with their sick child?”

 

“Wouldn’t be that off-base,” he snarls.

 

“ _What_ did you just say?”

 

Poe and Gozetta are both bent halfway across the table, glaring daggers at each other; they’re completely tensed, as if ready to pounce. The tension in the room has reached a boiling point, and Rey knows that regrettable things are about to be said. So in the interest of keeping the peace, protecting both her sister and her sister’s marriage _from_ her sister, she sees no other choice but to intervene.

 

“I’ll stay,” she announces, calmly.

 

“No, Rey.” Poe shakes his head, still glowering at his wife. “That’s not right—he’s our kid. You should go, have a good time, enjoy—”

 

“It’s fine,” she cuts across him. “I don’t mind, really. I wasn’t… even feeling that up to it, anyway.”

 

“Well there you have it,” Gozetta sniffs. Poe opens his mouth but before he can speak, she shoots up from the table, leaning forward on her palms to spit angrily at him: “Now.  _This_ beast has to go finish getting ready.”

 

With that, she spins and stomps from the room, heedless of their son sleeping down the hall.

 

Poe sighs.

 

“Gozetta would never shut up about it if you went without her, made her go without you, or insisted that neither of you go,” Rey says, in a low voice.

 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sor—”

 

“I meant it, Poe.” She waves her hand, dismissing his apology. “It’s fine. Really.”

 

For a long moment, he stares at her, once again frowning. He frowns so much these days; Rey can count on her hands the number of times she’s seen him smile since she arrived.

 

“Yeah,” he finally says. “Yes. Okay. You really sure?”

 

“I’m really sure.”

 

And so, approximately thirty minutes later— Gozetta sporting a face of flawlessly applied makeup and a synthfur stole wrapped around her shoulders, Poe freshly showered and shaved— they emerge ready for the evening, looking much happier with each other than they did before. One final burst of instructions about the boys and a grateful but rushed hug between the sisters ensue, and then they are out the door.

 

There is a very still, very stagnant, almost dreamy, stretch of time that follows. Rey sits at the table, picking at the soft coarseweave of her new tunic and leggings. She stares at the blank wall, she listens to Weir’s holotoon. She doesn’t cry, a fact for which she’s grateful. Her exhaustion, the dejection she feels: it’s too much effort to cry.

 

She just stares.

 

When she finally snaps out of it, she returns to the guest room and changes back into the desert rags she made for herself on Jakku, all those years ago.

 

 

. . .

 

 

At some point, she falls into a light doze, curled up in one of the main room armchairs. Weir does the same on the sofa beside her, his breathing steady. The holotoon they’ve spent the evening watching, _Moray and Faz_ , continues projecting in bright colors and cheerful jingles from a low-slung coffee table long after they’ve both stopped watching.

 

That’s how Gozetta and Poe find them when they return home. Gozetta shakes her shoulder brusquely, snapping her awake.

 

“What time is it?” Rey gasps.

 

“Almost one.”

 

She jumps up from the chair in a panic. “His bactade!”

 

“Don’t worry about it.” Poe waves her off. “I got it. Go get some sleep. And thanks again, Rey, for staying with him.”

 

She nods gratefully, bids them goodnight, then heads down the hall.

 

But Gozetta trails after her. “What a night you missed!” she exclaims. “Poe was just in _awe_ of Captain Solo.”

 

Rey gives a noncommittal hum.

 

Leaning on the door jamb of the ‘fresher, Gozetta watches as Rey picks up the ultrasound cleaner and begins passing it over her bared teeth. It tingles in a way that Rey has still not grown used to; she’s quick to rinse her mouth out with water after, although Gozetta has told her any number of times that she doesn’t need to.

 

“Like a new man, he said.” She smirks at Rey. “He’s always told _me_ that when he first met the Captain during the war, when he was still just a pilot, he was one of the most temperamental and cantankerous men he’d ever had the poor fortune to fly with. But a genius in the cockpit.”

 

Rey spares no more than a glance towards her sister before returning her eyes to the mirror. Her wrinkles look pronounced under the bright vanity lights. Her whole face appears faded, really, even her light smattering of freckles. She sighs, but Gozetta barrels on, undeterred.

 

“Tonight, though? Lovely as can be! He was all charm, and full of incredible stories from the war.” She titters, as though still in recovery from a great shock. “And most shocking of all, he was quite friendly with our Brixie. I'm not ashamed to admit I was wrong about him and her! Really, I wouldn’t be surprised if something came of _that_.”

 

Though she tries to stop it, a sad little squawk is ripped from Rey’s throat. Him and Brixie. She should’ve seen it, that afternoon they were sitting on the porch. She had set her sights on him, hadn’t she? Why shouldn’t he return that interest?

 

Brixie is a pilot, Brixie is clever and educated, Brixie has a good family.

 

Brixie is young, and full of energy, and very pretty.

 

Brixie knows her own mind.

 

Brixie is so many things that Rey is not, that she has never been, that she cannot be.

 

She leans over to splash water on her face, in an attempt to forestall the tears that have begun pricking at her eyes.

 

“Ye-ep,” Gozetta says, sing-song. “Wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a _lot_ more of that Captain Solo around these parts, in fact.”

 

She reaches for a towel to dry her face off and hide the hurt she’s sure is evident there. When she returns it to her rack, her sister is once more looking at her.

 

“He was… a little rude about you, though.” She reflects for a second, pursing her lips in thought. “At least, I thought so.”

 

“Is that so,” is all Rey can get out, no more than a gulping whisper. She cannot afford to spare her breath; she holds it in her lungs, waiting for his verdict, given secondhand.

 

Gozetta frowns. “He said, and I quote, ‘She looks so different, I didn’t even realize it was her.’"

 

Now her breath escapes her like air from a popped leak-seeker balloon: all at once, in a great rush. And after, she is just as deflated.

 

Unwittingly pouring salt in the wound, Gozetta adds, “‘Altered beyond recognition.’ That’s how he put it."

 

Rey stares down at the sink, blinking rapidly. She might have suspected he’d be so cavalier, from his brief glimpse of her, and yet… to hear her sister mention it so offhandedly, to hear his harsh opinion spoken aloud…

 

It crushes her. She’s only twenty _seven_. (So it’s a hard twenty-seven. She’s spent most of her life alone on a kriffing desert planet, fending for herself. He’s no youngling either, is he?)

 

Unfair. It’s just all so unfair.

 

But it _is_ done now, isn’t it? It’s truly over, all of it.

 

“Okay,” she murmurs, then brushes past Gozetta and hurries down the hall without another word, keying in the code to activate her door's security lock once she’s inside.

 

The worst is over.

 

This is what Rey tells herself as she tucks herself in that night, her tears a secret she knows the pillowcase will keep.

 

 _The worst is over._  

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Downtown Hanna City sparkles at night, a million lights in a million windows like a wall of fireflies sitting sentry, casting a hazy glow up at the inky-blue sky. Two moons peek out from behind the skyscrapers, one amber, one lavender. The crisp air still hums with distant skylane traffic, an errant outburst of laughter here or singing there, but things are otherwise quiet.

 

Peaceful.

 

Ben has almost forgotten what it’s like to live a life outside of war. He’s not sure if he’s ever been a man at peace, but there was a time, once, when he was younger and brasher and not yet burned out on the galaxy’s caprice, when he would sit in the main hold of the _Millennium Falcon_ with his father and Chewbacca, laughing and gambling and shooting the shit. That was something like peace, he thinks.

 

(When he held her, too, he felt something like peace. A red-eyed beast that had always writhed just beneath his skin knelt down and was still, only for her. And what choice had there been but to love her for that, and for her beauty, for her mind? To offer himself up on a platter, for her taking? She’d tamed the beast, after all, and the man.

 

He should have known it was too good to be true.)

 

A door slides open behind him. Light from Senator Organa’s penthouse apartment spills across the balcony; his mother joins him, her heels tip-tapping as she takes a seat beside him on the cushioned bench. There’s a crystal tumbler in each of her hands, Corellian whiskey on the rocks. Without speaking, she offers one to him.

 

He accepts, in corresponding silence. Together they watch the night wind down, lights blinking out one by one as the city’s residents head off to sleep.

 

“Well?” she husks out, after a while. “How are the Damerons? I hope you told them how disappointed I was not to be there.” To herself she mutters, “Rather be out at their orchard than eating overcooked marmal-fish at the Skygarden Cafe with that wretched Carise Sindian any day of the week.”

 

“I told them,” he says.

 

“I’ll be gone tomorrow morning before you’re even awake,” she informs him. “Reconstruction negotiations are finally getting underway on Coruscant. They’ll take two or three weeks, maybe longer.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“Amilyn wants all of us to get together for dinner soon, on Gatalenta.”

 

An impassive grunt is the best he can muster.

 

She sighs. “What’s wrong?”

 

Leia sounds as weary as he feels, and his answering sigh is just as long-suffering as hers. “You told me once that you had hopes for me,” he begins, casting a glance her way to find her watching him, eyes narrowed. “Hopes that I… would settle down one day.”

 

“Oh? Have you met someone?” she inquires, with a studied aloofness that does not fool him.

 

 _Yes, eight years ago,_ he thinks, before reminding himself: _But she was inconstant and weak. Weak of heart. Weak of mind._

 

But then, he was the fool who fell in love with such a woman, wasn’t he?

 

“Maybe,” he replies, instead. “Poe Dameron’s younger sister—”

 

“Ah, Brixie.” Leia’s dark eyes shine, reflecting the city lights. “She flew for the Civilian Defense Fleet for a short time, I think.”

 

Ben nods. “She’s at Chandriltech now.”

 

“Such a clever girl.” She takes a sip of her whiskey before arching a meaningful eyebrow at him.

 

“Hm,” is his laconic response.

 

“And a nice family. The Damerons are good people, well-respected and hard working.”

 

“Hm.”

 

“And…” A twitch of her lips; she stifles her smirk. “…so pretty, too.”

 

He works his jaw for a moment, contemplating, then asks, “You’ve met her?”

 

“Only in passing, when she was still just a tiny thing,” she says, tapping her finger against her chin. “Always trailing after her big brother and sister, from what I can recall. But I hear she’s grown up to be quite a beauty.”

 

Ben retreats to safety. “Hm.”

 

“Han would’ve liked her,” she says, softly.

 

Maybe his father would’ve, maybe he wouldn’t have. But there was only _one_ woman on whom his father had insisted he not give up. It comes back to him: the disconcertingly grave expression on Han’s face when Ben had told him they were leaving Jakku without Rey, how he’d ranted and stalled for hours, insisting Ben go back and get her.

 

How stubbornly he had refused.

 

(The thought of it makes his chest feel tight. He soothes it with another sip of whiskey.)

 

His father had died less than a month later. A negotiation gone wrong, Han caught in the crosshairs. Not even a full bacta immersion would have been able to save him by the time Ben had pulled his body from the wreckage. Perhaps if he’d known more about his connection with the Force, in that moment when he’d found Han riddled with plasma burns and dying…

 

But he did not— could not— heal him.

 

Ben finishes his whiskey in one swallow, soliciting a strange look from his mother. He hadn’t. He hadn’t known, or understood, or accepted the Force. He’d barely begun to explore it, with _her_.

 

He’d hated it, that part of himself. Hated the thought that Darth Vader’s blood, in some sense, ran through his veins. His mother had taught him that hatred, when she’d sat him down at eight years old and explained who he was, what it meant to be the scion of such a man. He’d buried that hatred deep, and from it had sprouted the saplings of his fear.

 

And it had ruined them. In that, she had been correct. But— as he’d discovered later from Lieutenant Dameron, who’d heard it from her brother, who’d been told by that wretched sister he married, who of course had the confidence of _her_ — she had allowed herself to be persuaded of his wrongness by that damned Abednedo, when before she had given him so much hope, when the thing between them could have saved them both, and in that…

 

He could not allow for any correctness in that; there was none. Only an unforgivable weakness.

 

No matter.

 

Chewbacca, loyal, brave Chewbacca, had left him not long after. _Time to return to Kashyyyk,_ he’d said. _My soul needs mending._

 

Of course, he had been able to relate. How terribly he had wished that he could do the same for his own, just by going home. Or returning to her. But there had been no solace for him in either option, and there was his pride to consider; it had not allowed for any such abasement.

 

And so, when the call had come from his mother, he’d answered it. He went to war, channeled all his rage and sorrow into his singular mission of redemption. Flying, first, and commanding, later; he’d liberated the Outer Rim planets that had been stripped and exploited for their resources by the First Order. He’d brought them to their knees, and returned peace to the galaxy, if not himself.

 

What could be done to undo his grandfather’s evil, he has done. He’s made amends, of a sort. He and Leia and Luke: all limbs belonging to the same body, the body of the New Republic. Working in harmony to steer the ship back to rights.

 

Because… what else was there, for him? Smuggling bored him to death, in truth. It had been for his father’s sake that he’d entered the profession in the first place, and once his father was gone— slain, and in no small part lost because of Ben’s rejection of the Force— there had been nothing in it for him.

 

Perhaps he could’ve taken up with his uncle and Mara Jade. Perhaps he could’ve learned the ways of the Jedi, as his grandfather had before him. But that had been the root of his family’s problems, hadn’t it?

 

No, even with Han gone, Ben had known that he was no Jedi, and that was not the path for him. He could not risk succumbing to the Dark Side; _she_ had been the only thing that could have tempted him to chance it.

 

(Without her, there was less fear, yes. She had been right about that. But there was less passion, too. And a decided loss of optimism.)

 

He huffs, belatedly. An amiable quiet has taken up residence on the balcony with him and Leia; in the years since Ben joined the military, he has become much closer to her. Though neither of them likes to verbally acknowledge their shared sensitivity to the Force, it does instill in him a sense of well-being, when she’s nearby.

 

Of being understood, and accepted. A necessary thing. Vital, really.

 

“Brixie Dameron, Glorificent, Yvana Bailer, I don’t care who,” he says at last, interrupting that quiet.

 

 _“Glorificent?”_ Leia chuckles. “Somebody thinks very highly of himself.”

 

“The who is irrelevant,” he retorts. “I’m Captain Ben Solo, aren’t I?” He tries to shape his mouth into something roguish and cavalier, imitating that lopsided smirk for which his father was so infamous. It doesn’t feel right, so he lets it drop.

 

“Do you mean to tell me you’re just going to marry the first girl who offers?” she scoffs.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Ben.”

 

He shrugs. “A little beauty, a few smiles, some compliments to the navy—”

 

“This is a distressingly low bar you’re setting, kiddo.” Her tone is sardonic, her eyebrows once more raised, now in disbelief.

 

Ben’s mind swings to _her_ , though he tries to avoid it. Her intrepid smile, her tears, the way her hand fit in his. Her soft breast in his palm, her chapped lips on his. How she would not meet his eyes, when she sent him away.

 

How time stood still in that moment, how he could not comprehend her choice. How she had just _decided_ she wasn’t in love with him anymore.

 

How she changed her mind, just like _that_.

 

How miserable and wilted and sad she’d seemed, walking past the Damerons’ house the other afternoon. She’d looked like she had wanted nothing more than to disappear completely.

 

 _The years have been unkind to her_ , he muses, with what he supposes is satisfaction. _As unkind as the damned family she was so desperate to see again._

 

This is validation. This is triumph. This is vindication. Yet… there is a pinch, somewhere at the base of his throat, like his windpipe has momentarily sealed itself shut. And a suspicion: the sentiments are hollow. What might he have felt, if Poe’s child hadn’t fallen and injured himself tonight, if she hadn’t stayed behind to play nursemaid? If they had spoken to each other at dinner? He chooses not to pull on that thread, instead returning his attention to his mother’s remark.

 

“Okay,” he concedes. “A sweet nature… _and_ a strong mind.”

 

“Hmph,” is his mother’s only— less than impressed— response. Her thick Émeraude and Chalcedony rings clink against her glass, an arrested and distracted rhythm.

 

The night drags on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone's in some serious denial, no? 😏 Anyway, some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa edition: [Carise Sindian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Carise_Sindian), [Amilyn Holdo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Amilyn_Holdo), [Glorificent](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Glorificent), [Yvana Bailer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Yvana_Bailer).
> 
> Some places on Chandrila! I would seriously love to go to [Sarini Island](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sarini_Island) and visit the [Sarini Island Zoo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sarini_Island_zoo). Fantastical zoos get me every time. Other places: what's a [medcenter](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Medcenter) [exactly what you think], [landing pod](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hangar) [ditto], and the [Skygarden](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skygarden) [yep]?
> 
> Where are [Gatalenta](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gatalenta) and [Kashyyyk](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kashyyyk)?
> 
> Are [bees](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bee) a thing in the gffa? [Yes!]
> 
> What is [Aurebesh](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Aurebesh)?
> 
> Some materials? [Durasheet](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Durasheet), [plasticine](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plasticine), [Émeraude](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/%C3%89meraude), and [Chalcedony](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chalcedony).
> 
> Mmm, [crumblebuns](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Crumblebun). I would eat the hell out of one of those. Maybe with a glass of [Corellian whiskey](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellian_whiskey), for maximum decadence?
> 
> What's an [ultrasound cleaner](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ultrasound_cleaner)? [In my headcanon, Rey has always used a [toothbrush](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Toothbrush) and the tiniest bit of water on Jakku and is totally unused to this expensive grooming tech!]
> 
> So many new textiles and clothing materials! What is [brocart](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Brocart), [Govath-wool](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Govath-wool), [Fleuréline weave](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fleur%C3%A9line_weave), [coarseweave](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coarseweave), [kelpcotton](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kelpcotton), [gemweb](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gemweb), and [synthfur](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Synthfur)?
> 
> And of course, you need a [tailor-droid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tailor-droid) to turn all of this into a wardrobe!
> 
> Poor Weir in this chapter, huh? Some med stuff: [medisensor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Medisensor), [encephaloscanner](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Electroencephaloscan), [bactade](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bactade), [antishock](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Antishock).
> 
> Also, [bones](http://www.assh.org/portals/1/Images/anatomy_images/Bones-Metacarpals_Middle.jpg?ver=2014-02-03-153614-980)! How do they work?
> 
> What's [Moray and Faz](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Moray_and_Faz) and is a [holotoon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Holotoon) what you think it is? [Yes.]
> 
> What's a [leak-seeker balloon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Leak-seeker_balloon)?
> 
> What's a [security lock](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Security_lock)? [Exactly what you think.]
> 
> Okay, I think that's all from me. I hope the alterations I have made to how the events of this chapter occur are okay! I tried to stay true to the spirit of the story, if not the exact play-by-play. Thank you for reading! 💗


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “…there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! A couple things at the beginning here. First of all, I have another absolutely beautiful piece of art to share with you, from the very talented [yamstrange](https://twitter.com/yamstrange), who painted a [weary and lonely Rey sweeping outside Ergel's bar](https://twitter.com/yamstrange/status/1092480190486380545). I love it so much and I can't stop clicking on it so I can swoon over the colors and the wistful expression on her face. Thank you again, yam! 💗
> 
> Thank you as always to my magnificent beta-reader, [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado), and this chapter's lovely alpha reader, [Trixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen)! ❤ You guys remain the best. 
> 
>   **Also, a warning for this chapter: there is ingestion of a mildly psychotropic space tea. Its effect is basically on par with marijuana, I'd say: relaxation, some spaciness [pun very much intended]. There's a bit of a lowering of shields for Force-sensitive drinkers, which Rey experiences. If you'd rather not read that part, when you get to, _“So,” she says, lifting up her cup in a toast, “Welcome.”_ , you can use CTRL + F to skip down to, _“But she does not cry.”_ I hope this is helpful and doesn't hamper your enjoyment of the chapter. Please feel free to reach out to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive) if you have any questions or concerns!**

**42 ABY.**

 

Gozetta’s prediction about seeing more of the Captain, unfortunately, proves true.

 

And worse yet, Rey has no excuse the next time dinner plans are arranged; not only have Weir’s collarbone and finger been healed by the bactade, but Gozetta— to Rey’s utter surprise— has seemingly taken her words to heart, and procured from somewhere an antiquated nanny droid.

 

Antiquated, but more than up to the task of minding her boys for a few hours in the evening.

 

So it happens that three days later, she finds herself once more hovering around the dining table at the Great House. This time they are to eat out on the lawn, the table having been carried out, wicker chairs brought over from the veranda, the scene illuminated by the incandescent glow lanterns that have been strung from the trees.

 

“The last warm day before the cold sets in, I can feel it in my bones,” Shara explains, as Rey helps her set the table and light the vast collection of beeswax candles she’s amassed in its center. “We have to make the most of it.”

 

Brixie steps down from the veranda’s bottom step not a moment later, barefoot and dressed in a swinging knee-length dress, its thin fineweave straps flattering on her graceful shoulders. Smiling, she treads through the grass towards them. Her hands are full with wine glasses, but as soon as she sets them down on the table, she throws an arm around Rey.

 

“We missed you the other night,” she says, her voice warm with affection. “But I’m glad my nephew had his wonderful aunt there, to watch over him.”

 

Rey forces a smile. “Of course.”

 

Shara sighs happily at the sight of them embracing. Then her face falls. “Oh, the priprak!” she gasps, spinning on her heel. As she rushes towards the stairs, she calls back: “Girls, finish the table, please?”

 

Brixie only shrugs bemusedly when Rey looks to her for answers. “She’s trying out a new recipe with the kitchen droids.”

 

Resuming her lighting of candles, Rey asks, “What’s priprak?”

 

“Chandrilan forest bird, an old traditional recipe.” Brixie gives an affectionate roll of her eyes. “Captain Solo mentioned it was a childhood favorite the other night. Mom is _determined_ to recreate it perfectly.”

 

With the last of the wine glasses positioned by each plate, she begins folding a stack of cloth napkins into elaborate bird shapes.

 

“See?” she asks, balancing the first of these creations on her palm. “Priprak.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“By the way, why’re _you_ here early but not Gozetta or Poe?”

 

Rey blushes, recalling the soft moment that had passed between her sister and brother-in-law earlier as they watched their new nanny droid attend to their children.

 

 _This was… a really good idea,_ Poe had conceded, gazing at his wife with something akin to admiration.

 

Gozetta had only been able to maintain the facade of offended pride for about a half a second before she’d broken out into a grin. _You really think so?_

 

He’d taken her hand in his. _Let’s go for a walk,_ he’d said, by way of response. _Down on the beach._

 

“They’re… having a nice day,” Rey says, diplomatically. “Thought I’d leave them to it for a while.”

 

Brixie just chuckles. “Yeah, those are truly rarer than snow on Tatooine… what a good big sister you are.” Her face clouds over for just a moment, maybe at a memory of her own sister, before she inhales deeply and says in a confidential tone: “I can’t _wait_ to see Captain Solo again. Is it too obvious if I arrange our seats so that we’re next to each other?”

 

Swallowing back her misery, Rey chokes out, “Just obvious enough, I think.”

 

“Ha! Well, then.”

 

Brixie’s smirk brings too many memories to the fore— times when Rey herself had smirked at having him close, at finding some flimsy excuse to touch him, at reveling in his excuses to touch her. She turns to the path in the woods, wishing ardently for Poe and Gozetta to appear and serve as a buffer.

 

“I’ll just…” she trails off, moving in its direction. “We’re just about ready here, I’d better go fetch them.”

 

“Make sure to knock first, if they’re in the bedroom!” she hears, laughingly hollered after her.

 

She doesn’t reply. She can’t. It’s enough that she continues to draw breath; to ask any more of herself would be beyond cruel.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Brixie is as good as her word.

 

The Captain arrives, bearing a surprise visitor: Lando, outfitted in another regal cape and matching garments made from gold-threaded auropyle and black velvoid.

 

Upon exiting his airpeeder, a sleek silvery model so new Rey doesn’t recognize it, Lando greets them all with handshakes and hugs. _He_ does the same, except to Rey. She receives the curtest of nods from him, and after that, he seemingly does his best to ignore her very existence.

 

But Rey is prepared now. She’d spent a vigorous half hour in the ‘fresher, scrubbing her skin raw, her hair is braided in a flattering crown around her head by Gozetta, she’s wearing the leggings and soft sage tunic she meant for him to see her in the other night. After she returns his nod politely, she keeps her stolen glimpses of him to a surreptitious minimum.

 

And she does not cry.

 

They are seated around the table, with Brixie at the Captain’s right elbow, and Lando at his left.

 

It is, Rey supposes, just a coincidence that she is directed to the other end on the opposite side, next to Gozetta. As far away as possible from him, not that anyone besides Rey would notice.

 

As is customary at the Great House, there is koyo wine and conversation before dinner is served. The sky darkens as the sun sinks behind the forest, but the glow lanterns and candles throw a flickering, golden light over everything. The air holds onto its warmth, the ambience is pleasant, and if Rey notices how many times Brixie casually touches _his_ shoulder to get his attention, she makes no indication, instead focusing her attention on an involved story Lando is telling Shara about some good-old-days adventure with Han on Kessel.

 

He speaks of Han’s loose-limbed waggishness in the past tense, and although Rey is not exactly surprised to discover he’s no longer alive, she is stricken all the same.

 

She hadn’t imagined she would be. In the years that have passed since they sat together in the cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon_ , where he’d offered her a place on his ship, his acceptance of her and Ben’s relationship, and the love of a father, she has always imagined that he finally settled down and lived out his life somewhere pastoral, somewhere beautiful. And that if he _had_ died, it was in his sleep. She had made her peace with that scenario.

 

(In her imaginings, he always had _him_ , at least, by his side. His son, strong and sturdy and steadfast, there to provide a shoulder to lean on as Han inched towards old age and death. That had given her some small comfort.)

 

But observing the melancholy way Lando fiddles with his fork, and Shara’s sad sighing laugh at their mutual friend’s youthful temerity… she has to wonder. The possibility of his death being anything other than painless makes her heart ache, so she sets it aside for the time being. She cannot take any more of that, not right now.

 

“I disagree _completely_.” Gozetta’s voice rings out, strident even around a mouthful of lavender treebread; at once, the smaller muted conversations happening around the table come to a halt.

 

The Captain leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. “Why?” he all but barks at her.

 

Rey darts her gaze back-and-forth between her sister and her former lover, fingers nervously clutching the seat of her wicker chair.

 

“Oh, the victors always write the history books, don’t they?” Gozetta drawls, arms crossed. “And the New Republic—whatever _you_ might think of it—has done its damnedest to make sure no one ever knows about the Empire’s good deeds.”

 

Captain Solo’s jaw tics. “Those are… ?”

 

“Unification of the galaxy?”

 

He scoffs. “At what cost?”

 

“And—an end to the Clone Wars,” she rebuts, faltering slightly.

 

“Which were engineered by the Emperor.”

 

Gozetta frowns. “Well, the Empire was very good to _my_ family! My father was raised to the rank of—”

 

“By all means,” he seethes, running roughshod across her, “if _your_ father benefitted from the tyranny of Palpatine’s rule over quadrillions of innocents—including my parents, the shipyards of Corellia and the ashes of Alderaan—then… please, continue lying to yourself.”

 

Gozetta blinks at him, tongue-tied, her face drained of color. Sighing, Poe brings a hand up to rest between her trembling shoulder blades, a tentative gesture of support. Brixie seems to be able to do no more than grimace; even Shara and Kes have nothing to say. The tension in the air pulls tauter than a seven-string hallikset: one wrong note plucked at this moment may very well send the remainder of the evening spiraling into cacophony.

 

Rey picks up her glass and drinks deeply of her wine.

 

“Ah, the priprak!” cries Shara, a bit manic, as the kitchen droids file out onto the lawn carrying plates of roasted bird and side dishes of various vegetables.

 

“How—wonderful! Look, everyone, at this beautiful feast Beex and his fellows have prepared for us! You’ve all truly outdone yourselves this time!” She rambles loudly, gesturing with a broad sweep of her arm towards BX-778 and the others, allowing no room for a continuation of the argument. “Now, please—let’s all—just enjoy the priprak. Okay?”

 

A few minutes of silent eating follow. And normally, Rey would give herself over to the meal, but now she can think of nothing but his scathing reproach, and the food is like flavorless dust in her mouth.

 

He hates her. He must. With an opinion like that of her father, and probably one not much better of her sister, how could he not? Her sin, as it must seem in his eyes— of choosing them over him— becomes all the more egregious when seen in this light: her disgraceful Empire-loving family.

 

Overcome with shame, she cannot even lift her eyes from her plate; her entire body burns with it, for herself and for her relations.

 

It’s Lando who finally breaks the awkward spell. With a sharp huff, he chides, “Now let’s not forget, Benny boy—there was a time when you weren’t quite so patriotic towards the New Republic, either.”

 

He grins at the Captain, who receives his remark with a cool stare. His head is in profile to Rey, his strong break of a nose and heavy brow delineated by the hazy glow lanterns behind him. And she finally has a moment to really study his scar: a deep wound, but well-healed, the ruptured skin on his cheek and jaw knitted so tightly back together that it is no more than a shallow red line.

 

(She wonders if it hurts. She’d like to press her palm to it, and soothe his pain, if it does.)

 

“And?” he snaps.

 

“I recall you being a chip off the old block, like a young Han Solo, right up until you and your old man landed on Jakku.”

 

The Captain gives a slight nod then tilts his head, waiting for Lando to reach his point.

 

Stroking his mustache, Lando muses, like it is only the two men at the table, “Things changed there for you, didn’t they? Just like things changed for Han… somewhere around Tatooine.”

 

“Yes,” the Captain admits. “There were…”

 

He hesitates, just long enough to sneak a peek at Rey; it lasts a fraction of a second, but it still makes her heart seize in her throat.

 

“Yes,” he repeats, simply, cutting off whatever he might’ve been about to say. He shrugs. “They did.”

 

Is he thinking of their time together? How he was affected by it? Was he affected by it? _Of course he was,_ she tells herself. _I remember that much._ He cannot have forgotten it or her, not with how he’s been treating her. No. No, he remembers. She knows he does. But does it wound him like it does her? The very idea of him still caring about those memories, about _her_ , turns every muscle in her body to stone. A lump of chewed pripak sits on her tongue, but Rey can no more swallow than she can breathe.

 

And she can’t look away from him.

 

Gozetta attacks her meal in glum silence, and Poe looks even less cheerful than Gozetta. Even Brixie’s eyes flit nervously between the Captain and Lando in expectation of another outburst.

 

And maybe Rey could say something to lighten the mood, ease the awkwardness, if she weren’t so completely captivated by what he has left unspoken. She doesn’t, though. For one thing, she still has a disintegrating mouthful of pripak she can’t bring herself to swallow.

 

“How? How’d they change?” Lando presses. He leans back in his chair, waiting to be enlightened, then quirks a brow at Rey. “Say, that’s where _you’re_ from, isn’t it? Didn’t you two meet, on Jakku?”

 

A beat. All eyes shift to her.

 

The Captain saves her from having to answer, though his reply is barbed. “Only in passing.”

 

Another glance stolen her way, their eyes meet; Rey just barely manages to suppress her anguished squeak. How cruel. What a cruel thing for him to say. And yet, she has to wonder, would it have been crueler for him to dredge up their history, to expose her weaknesses to the people at this table? She can’t decide.

 

“Anyway… things changed, is all,” he mutters, turning to the plate of cooling food in front of him. “Han died—not long after. And I became who I was needed to be.”

 

Rey supposes from Lando’s crestfallen expression, a reaction to the casual mention of his old friend’s death, that he’s going to let the matter drop.

 

And he does.

 

Which means the conversation has died, again. No one looks at anyone; the only sounds that break the awful silence are cricketsong and forks scraping against plates.

 

 _Now_ , she thinks. _Say something now. Fix this, isn’t that what you do, fix things? Fix this, Rey._

 

“This priprak is the best thing I’ve ever eaten!” she blurts out.

 

Do his eyes soften, infinitesimally, as his gaze sweeps past her on its way to Shara? Maybe she’s only imagining it; maybe it’s only wishful thinking.

 

(Like an echo of the past, she remembers telling him, with a shy glance from beneath her eyelashes: _“It’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole life, to be honest.”_

 

How he’d preened, how he’d cared for her. How it had made her cheeks flush and her heart race to see him preen, to let him take care of her.

 

How happy and young they’d been. Rey wants to sob out an apology, at the memory.)

 

“Yes,” he agrees, his tone mild, the sentiment directed towards the head of the table. “Just like I remembered it.”

 

Shara nods gratefully.

 

Does _he_ remember that day? He doesn’t look at her again, merely resumes his eating as though it requires all his concentration.

 

The silence lingers; in one swallow, Rey finishes her wine. Thoughtfully, Shara reaches for a bottle and refills it.

 

“Oh, Dad!” Brixie exclaims, upbeat, doing for all of them what Rey could not, “You will never bel _ieve_ what happened at Chandriltech the other day!”

 

“I suspect not, but… tell me anyway,” Kes jokes.

 

Everyone chuckles, and just like that, the night is saved.

 

 

. . .

 

 

By the time Brixie retrieves a datapad from the house to look up the ships that the Captain has commanded, the candles are halfway melted down to the table, the food has long since been eaten and several bottles of wine have been emptied.

 

But— perhaps in the interest of avoiding another confrontation— Kes continues directing the droids to bring out more bottles. And so everyone is half in their cups, a sort of lazy joviality reigning over the flame-lit scene, when Brixie taps the screen a few times and says, “Alright, let’s see, the… _Naberrie_? Ah, here it is!”

 

She beams over at him, and he gives a soft, amused huff. (Rey remembers when he used to huff like at _her_ that.)

 

“That was a _Starhawk_ -class battleship, wasn’t it?” Lando asks.

 

Poe snorts. “Bucket of bolts, those things. Total junk.”

 

“Ungrateful whippersnapper!” Lando retorts, laughing. “The _Starhawks_ were beauties! A little ugly, maybe, scraped together from old Imperial ships, sure, but you couldn’t ask for a better ship, in a fight. That is… they were no _Millennium Falcon_ , sure… but then, what ship ever was?”

 

Again, Ben’s gaze slips over to Rey. And again she is caught in the act, because of _course_ she has been watching him.

 

When their eyes meet, they hold, just for a moment; it is as electrifying, as stultifying, as heart-stopping as it was the very first time, back at Niima Outpost. She gasps softly, so softly that no one sees or hears but him.

 

Hastily, he looks away: first down at his plate, then over at Brixie, to whom he gives a tight smile.

 

“Tell us about the _Naberrie_ , Ben?” she implores, placing a hand on his. “Please? Your stories are so fascinating!”

 

“What are _my_ stories, bantha fodder?” Poe’s tone makes it clear he’s joking; he’s got an arm slung across the back of Gozetta’s chair, and his face is flush from the glass of wine in his hand. He smirks at himself sardonically, even as Brixie sends back:

 

“Bantha fodder is light years ahead of your tired old yarns, pal.”

 

She gets an earnest laugh out of him for that, and she joins him, the two of them sharing that peculiar kind of delight that can only be derived from affectionately torturing a sibling.

 

When they quiet down, the Captain says, “I don’t think I told you before, how I came to be at the helm of the _Naberrie_.”

 

“Oh, yes please,” Shara throws in, leaning on one elbow, cheek on her knuckles. “I’d love to hear this! That was—after my time, I believe.”

 

A respectful nod. “It was… long after Jakku.” He doesn’t look her way when he says it, yet Rey wonders if maybe he’s fighting the urge to do so. It seems as though he looks around the table at everyone _but_ her, willfully, like he won’t allow himself that for whatever reason.

 

More wishful thinking, no doubt.

 

“And Han’s death,” he continues. “I’d been flying at the rank of Lieutenant when a distress call came in from the Atterra system—planet Bravo.

 

“Caught between pirates and the First Order, they said, and quickly running out of options. My commanding officer at the time, Captain Hestu—” He looks to Poe. “You remember him, don’t you?”

 

“Stick in the mud,” Poe grouses. “An ornery old goat.”

 

The Captain nods. One silver-black lock of his hair breaks free from the pack, tumbling down over his brow, and Rey bites the inside of her cheek.

 

“He denied my request to answer the call. Insisted it was a trap.”

 

Brixie’s eyes are wide; she’s enraptured, her hand still resting on his. “So what’d you do?”

 

He shrugs. “I went anyway. Took a few captured Brights, snuck onto the planet, got the lay of the land. Then I reported back… to Admiral Holdo.”

 

“Oh-ho!” Shara cheers, laughing. “I’m sure Hestu didn’t appreciate that.”

 

“Didn’t matter,” he says. A smile attempts to break free, but he stifles it; his full lips twitch with the effort. “By the time he found out, I’d already gotten the go-ahead from Holdo to mount a full-scale liberation of the planet. We had it freed in under a week.”

 

“And you were made Captain?” asks Gozetta. It’s the first she’s spoken since his rebuke.

 

“I was,” he answers. “And assigned the _Naberrie_ , with a new set of parameters. Never reported to that… old goat… again.”

 

Poe grins at that, and Brixie breaks out into applause. “Bra- _vo_! What a hero,” she sighs.

 

“More like a dissident,” he counters. “If I’d been wrong, about the distress signal?” He shakes his head at himself. “I might’ve spent the rest of the war in a brig somewhere.”

 

“Ah, but you weren’t and you didn’t,” Kes reminds him. “Lucky for you.”

 

Brixie blows a raspberry, dismissing her father’s insinuation. “Anyway… after the _Naberrie_ was shot to Kingdom-come near Hays Minor, it looks like…” she picks up the datapad again, and scrolls down before continuing, “Then you were given the _Corellian Hound_.”

 

Shara’s heavy sigh rolls across the table. “That must be where you met Terena, of course.”

 

“That was my sister,” Brixie supplies, confusing the Captain’s pained expression for one of incomprehension. “Lieutenant Terena Dameron.”

 

Rey clasps Shara’s hand, offering her a sympathetic smile; the older woman squeezes it.

 

The Captain clears his throat. Tosses back the errant lock of hair. Looks down at his glass of wine.

 

Then he stands, picks up his chair, and carries it over to Shara. He sets it down in the grass at the corner of the table, between her and Lando.

 

“You know what I remember about Lieutenant Dameron?” he asks, quietly.

 

Shara’s breathing has gone rapid and shallow, her hand squeezing Rey’s to the point of pain.

 

“Her bravery.” He takes Shara’s free hand in his. “There wasn’t a pilot on the _Corellian Hound_ braver than Terena Dameron.”

 

“Oh!” Shara murmurs, overcome. A few tears fall, heedless of her blinking. A hush has fallen over the rest of the table.

 

For one fleeting second, the Captain and Rey’s eyes meet again— each of them holding a hand of the grieving woman, each of them offering what solace they can— and Rey refuses to look away, though his gaze is searing. It kills her, just a tiny bit, to look into his eyes and find them exactly as she remembers: full of empathy, rendered dark by the candlelight, deep and complex, and intelligent, so intelligent. Probing. Always noticing far more than she had meant to show him.

 

She blinks and it’s passed; he’s looking at Shara. “Would you like to hear about her?” he asks.

 

“I would love that,” Shara gasps.

 

In a low rumble, he begins to speak of Terena Dameron. The conversations around them resume, everyone giving them the privacy demanded by such a moment. With charity and grace, he shares tales of the Lieutenant’s bravery, and in doing so he gives some piece of the daughter, enfolded in memory, back to the mother.

 

And all the while, Rey’s heart sinks, because the more she hears him speaks, the more she becomes unshakably certain of one thing:

 

He remains every bit the man she fell in love with, eight years ago.

 

 

. . .

 

 

In passing, the Captain mentions that his mother will be off-world for quite some time.

 

 _Living on her diplomatic barge during negotiations in Galactic City,_ he says.

 

As the days pass, each one colder than the last until Rey can see her breath in the air at night and the ground is white with delicate hoarfrost in the mornings, he seems all too happy to have a makeshift family with whom he can pass his evenings.

 

Luke and Mara Jade come to stay with him. _Renovations and construction on the bar,_ they explain. They too become regulars at the Great House dinners.

 

More evenings follow. They are not as eventful as Rey’s first— Gozetta manages to keep her unpopular opinions on galactic politics to herself, and somehow, they never again broach the topic of his time on Jakku— and after a week or so, Rey almost becomes inured to the pain of seeing him, of receiving his cold courtesy.

 

Almost.

 

And even if she weren’t, the Damerons are more than happy to have him over, as often as he is willing to accept their invitation.

 

So whether she likes it or not, this becomes her new normal.

 

 

. . .

 

 

A hothouse, all shimmering mists and swirling mystery, greets the party when they cut down into the atmosphere of Gatalenta.

 

Another evening, another dinner, but this one: on a neighboring planet in the Inner Rim. The audacity, the extravagance, the thrill of being included in such a thing, of traveling across the galaxy for a _meal_ , keeps Rey silent for most of the journey there.

 

Lando provides transport on his Personal Luxury Yacht 3000, the _Lady Luck_. They swoop down through from clouds into fog, and he brings them low, swerving between bright green hills as he follows a wide river upstream. Rey, seated on a sumptuous pouf couch in the ship’s lounge, envisions the river as an artery that carries the planet’s lifeblood to its hidden heart. She sits at an angle on the couch, one leg folded under her and an arm propped against its back, to better enable her ogling of the scenery.

 

She’d thought _Chandrila_ was full of wonders.

 

The soil, so dark it is almost black, contrasts sharply with the river’s tumbling waters, a chalky blue so light they remind Rey of bantha milk. The surrounding terrain is lush; low-lying ferns and moss cling to the willowy trees of its lowland forests. Everything is so bright, so green. Greener than Chandrila, even.

 

And the hills that rise up from these forests, she observes, are unusual; there is a curious stair-like shape to their sloping sides, as though they’ve been carved with a climbing giant in mind.

 

“Terracing,” she hears Gozetta, perched beside her, say in an undertone. Rey glances her way, but her sister’s eyes remain on Poe, who is serving as co-pilot on the bridge. “Gatalenta produces very fine entheogenic tea. It’s grown there, on the terraces. Supposedly Senator Organa drinks it.”

 

A bout of feminine laughter catches her attention; across the lounge, on an identical pouf couch, Brixie and Captain Solo are talking quietly. His posture is stiff as ever; these days, he always he sits as though he’s new to the act, big hands clenched atop his knees. But Brixie has adapted a casual lean against his arm, giggling her way through some story. And each time she pauses, he gives an encouraging nod.

 

Rey has to look away.

 

A little further down the couch: Luke and Mara Jade, honorary members of their little Chandrila group. Luke has relaxed back into the body-conforming cushions, his arm wrapped around Mara’s shoulders. Her hand rests on his thigh as she listens to his shambling story, but then… her eyes flick over to meet Rey’s. Her smile is knowing.

 

Cheeks aflame, Rey spins back to face the viewport. Caught in the act of staring _again_ ; she should know better by now. Especially with Mara.

 

Homes begin to dot the hills, and there again, she is struck by their singularity. They are geodesic domes, each of their panels clear— glass, she speculates, or transparisteel or perhaps crystalplex— half-buried in the earth, almost as if they themselves have been cultivated from its rich soil.

 

“Lovely,” she murmurs, wonderstruck. “What a lovely place to live.”

 

“I suppose it’s nice enough.” Gozetta glances out the viewport only for a moment before resuming her jealous surveillance of her husband. “But the people are so austere! Not a single city on the entire rock. Just farmers and philosophers and tea and forests, blech.”

 

Rey tilts forward until her forehead rests against the cool transparisteel pane, and continues drinking in the scenery.

 

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” she sighs.

 

 

. . .

 

 

A tall, willowy woman with hair the color of the lilacs that grow in Gozetta’s garden stands outside her half-dome, situated at the peak of a particularly high hill, when Lando and Poe finally set the yacht down. Rey had been under the impression they were coming for dinner, because it had been late afternoon when they’d all climbed aboard, yet now she’s not exactly sure what time of day it is here; Gatalenta’s five suns sit high in the sky, their light made diffuse by the planet’s thick vapors.

 

And indeed, the lilac-haired woman greets them with a warm smile, calling out, “Good morning!”

 

An interplanetary breakfast-dinner party, then.

 

She introduces herself as the retired Admiral Amilyn Holdo. From the dome emerge two handsome women and a very attractive man, all as statuesque and stately and dressed in the same kind of simple yet tasteful robes as Amilyn; they are local friends of hers, introduced in a lively round of ‘hello’s’ and ‘how do you do’s’ and hand-shaking, but Rey doesn’t catch a single name beside Amilyn’s.

 

The air is so wet, so completely saturated, that she cannot get over the novelty of breathing it into her lungs. It feels as though the clouds have descended from the sky to crawl among the hills. She has a sudden urge to _really_ explore this place, to wiggle her toes down into its dark damp soil and drag her fingers through its cloudy waters and loll around on the moss-covered floor of its forests. But there’s no time; Amilyn is already extending a long, bracelet-laden arm in the direction of the dome’s door, and everyone is making their way inside.

 

Another woman, dressed in olive-hued khakis and sporting a grey-blonde head of curls, greets them from the kitchen area of the dome.

 

“Commander Larma D’Acy,” Amilyn says, to those who don’t already know her.

 

Larma waves as she stirs a pot of something viscous and pink. “Hope you all came hungry—I’ve made far too much Warlenttan beet stew!”

 

Appreciative murmurs abound. Rey takes stock of the Admiral’s home in awe; most of the dome is one large room, airy, flooded with the light pouring in from the glass. A dark earthen wall, on which several colorful tapestries hang, separates the living area from what she assumes to be a subterranean bedroom and refresher, built into the hillside. There’s not a single chair or sofa in sight, just deep-pile carpets overlapping across every bit of floorspace and large, soft-looking pillows arranged in a ring, all in tones of ochre and the darkest red that Rey has ever seen, darker even than the Damerons’ koyo wine.

 

All of this, the planet and the new people and the fascinating architecture, is almost enough to distract Rey from the way Brixie’s arm hangs loosely in the crook of the Captain’s elbow.

 

Almost.

 

“Shoes off, please.” Amilyn smiles at them. It’s an order, but one given so lightly that it doesn’t quite feel like it.

 

Just like that, Rey understands how this woman came to be Admiral; she can’t help but think she’d probably follow someone into war if they commanded her in Amilyn’s calm, kind manner. A little kindness, she reflects, can mean everything to a person. It can be the difference between advice heeded and discounted.

 

Once their boots lie in a heap by the glass door, they all meander towards the pillows. Amilyn fusses with something in the kitchen area for a moment before carrying over a tray weighed down by simple ceramic cups and a teapot. In the center of the room there is a low table, crafted from warm golden wood; she sets the tray down on it, then kneels while she pours and distributes the teacups. After pouring one final cup for herself, she takes a seat on a free pillow.

 

“So,” she says, lifting up her cup in a toast, “Welcome.”

 

Poe, seated on the pillow next to hers, taps Rey’s arm to get her attention. “Go easy on the tea,” he advises. “It’s not dangerous or anything, just… potent. Kinda’ mind altering.”

 

She sniffs it, and is immediately convinced of the truth in his words; its scent is both menthol and alcoholic, like it’s going to burn on the way down. But when she takes a sip, it merely warms her, and leaves a tingling trail in its wake. Within a few minutes of that sip, she finds her muscles loosening. Her mind floats away, full of air and light. She titters softly, to herself.

 

It’s obvious now why these people would reshape their hills to grow this tea: this is nice.

 

When she looks up, it’s into the scarred face of Captain Solo, seated directly across the ring of pillows. Her laughter has drawn his attention. Rey wants to believe there is something wistful in his air, in the way he’s half-turned his head away yet allowed his eyes to linger, drooping down to her lips then snapping back up, but she suspects it’s only the tea playing with her perception.

 

Is that _his_ melancholy she feels? Or her own?

 

Upon noticing her noticing him, he looks down into his own cup. He doesn’t meet her eyes again.

 

“Oh, trust me,” Amilyn is saying to one of the beautiful Gatalentans, with a rueful laugh, “there were _quite_ a few senators clamoring for disarmament after Endor.”

 

Mara grimaces. “Ugh. Don’t remind me.”

 

“Who knows what might have happened if Mon Mothma hadn’t been dissuaded from it by your mother?” Amilyn wonders aloud, tipping her chin towards Ben. “We’re lucky that’s a fight she won.”

 

The Captain buries what might be a smile in his tea.

 

Amilyn continues. “I’m disappointed she couldn't make it today.” She rests her cup on the carpet, then leans back on her hands. “Something tells me if I want to snag Senator Leia Organa-Solo for a dinner, I’m going to have to get on a ship and track her down myself on Coruscant.”

 

At that, he gives a bland: “Or Hosnian Prime.”

 

“Ah, yes.”

 

Rey is momentarily distracted by the way the three native Gatalentans— whose names she still does not know— have taken an obvious liking to the Captain. Though Brixie clings to his left arm, they sit clumped together on his right, murmuring amongst themselves and sending coy smiles his way.

 

The dome is warm, but not as warm as she thought it might be, when she’d stepped out of the yacht. “Phototropic shielding in the crystalplex,” she hears Amilyn tell someone. “And air conditioning. Most of the dome’s panels can be opened, too.”

 

Time goes a little wobbly. It’s not the same sort of alteration Rey feels when she drinks the Damerons’ koyo wine or the occasional beer with her sister and Poe. (It reminds her more of the way _they_ used to lose track of time together, wrapped up in the ecstasy of each other and their fumbling explorations.)

 

Rey is… relaxed. Her thoughts mosey away from her; she becomes entranced by the way a bit of sun has broken through the cloud and fog, and a single beam of light shines across the back of _his_ head. Like he has a halo. It’s a challenging task, watching that sunbeam sputter and dance over his dark hair, making the silver strands shine, all the while not _actually_ looking at him. It requires her complete attention.

 

Somehow, the conversation turns to couples in the military.

 

“I’ve avoided stationing them together whenever possible,” she hears Larma declare. “Too distracting.”

 

Luke scoffs, unconvinced. “Ridiculous. It wasn’t for Mara and me!”

 

 _Where has Gozetta gone?_ she ponders. She leans this way and that, only to discover that her sister is exactly where she last saw her, on a pillow to the other side of Poe. She’s busy picking at her cuticles, completely uninterested in anything happening around her.

 

“But how many times did you two get yourselves into terrible scrapes, because you were afraid for the other?”

 

Rey isn’t sure who’s asked that; Lando, perhaps. He’s sitting beside Amilyn, grey mustache twitching and eyes twinkling with amusement.

 

“My parents always did just fine,” Poe pipes up.

 

“Where _are_ Shara and Kes today?” someone asks.

 

“Little tuckered out on all the partying,” comes Poe’s reply, faint, as though from far away.

 

Someone is petting her hair. Rey shifts to investigate; Mara is seated very close to her now, on the same pillow, combing through the chestnut brown strands with her fingers.

 

“How are you feeling, Rey?” she asks, gently.

 

Rey regards her for a moment, enjoying the slight tugging on her scalp. “Oh, you know…” she says at last, then waves her hand at nothing. She blows out a deep breath; although she hasn’t really answered the question, her mind has already moved on to another topic. “The things you must have seen, out there with Luke, running missions—the two of you, like a binary star.”

 

There’s a pang of sorrow, then one of envy, then one of guilt, but they’re more subdued than normal; a perpetual hammer striking her chest, but for now, it is wrapped in thick cotton.

 

“The galaxy is incomprehensibly vast,” murmurs Mara, in response. “And full of wonder.”

 

Her mind explodes with images, at Mara’s words. Rapidfire: twinkling nebulae, eclipses, planets ringed in glittering ice, humid jungle moons rich with steam, stars slowly being born and dying in awe-inspiring displays of their tremendous gravity, asteroid belts, gravity wells, battle stations the size of planets. It’s all so vivid, she can’t be sure if it’s her own imagination at work or Mara’s memory. Everything is so calm, so soft and so quiet and so calm, and maybe she is accidentally dipping into an energy field that for so long, she has left abandoned within herself.

 

Mara nods, when Rey looks to her for answers. “Huh,” she says, marveling.

 

It doesn’t bother her, seeing what Mara has seen. It’s nice, really. Her mind wanders on.

 

What might it have been like, if that had been her? Rey steals a quick peek at him; though he’s sitting cross-legged, his spine is completely straight, his hands balled into fists in his lap. Brixie sways closer to him as she speaks to the Gatalentans gathered on his left; all of them appear to be completely captivated with the Captain.

 

She might’ve been _his_ partner. She can almost see it, how it all would’ve been.

 

Maybe they would’ve gone to war together, maybe not. Maybe they would have just supported the war efforts, as civilians often do. But she has no doubt in her mind that they would have flown together, side by side, in the cockpit of the _Falcon_ or some other ship.

 

And he would have held her every night, would have whispered soft things as they were falling asleep, would have cooked dinner for them and given her all his sleepy, grateful smiles when she learned how to use the caf machine and woke him up every morning with a mug of it, just the way he liked it, strong and black but tooth-rottingly sweet. All those days, all those moments, shared, two lives weaved together like one strand in the tapestry of the galaxy, and none of this interminable loneliness…

 

The tiniest whimper sounds out; it takes a moment before Rey realizes it’s come from her. Thankfully, it seems only Mara has noticed it, and before Rey can insist she’s fine, the Jedi has her arm around Rey.

 

“Shh,” she soothes. “You’re alright.”

 

And she is, in time. Or at least, she rolls her face into Mara’s shoulder, and hides it there until the urge to cry has passed.

 

“You know,” Amilyn’s voice drifts over, sounding both tranquil and speculative, “We Gatalentans  _do_ have some traditional dances, but…” a pause, as if she is looking about the room, “we need someone to play the touchboard.”

 

“Ah, I believe that is my cue to check on the stew,” Larma says, laughing.

 

“Dancing?”

 

Gozetta’s voice. Rey unearths her face from Mara’s shoulder to check and sure enough, it’s as though her sister’s switch has been turned back on; her eyes shine, her face is alight.

 

“I love dancing!” she cries. “Is it difficult, the touchboard? Let Rey do it! She hates dancing anyway.”

 

Rey frowns. That’s not true. She’s never said she hates dancing, has she? She doesn’t.

 

(Another unwelcome echo: his big warm hand clasping hers, the other on her waist, their bodies close, his warmth seeping through their clothes, warming her as he spun her around the confined crew quarters of the _Falcon_ , hushing her when she giggled at a misstep, pressing his lips to hers…)

 

She can almost feel the weight of his eyes on her. Is he remembering, too?

 

Poe has observed whatever emotions have passed across Rey’s face; he shakes his head, ready to refuse on her behalf. “Goz—”

 

“It’s alright, Poe,” Rey interjects. And it is. The thought of dancing, let alone dancing in front of _him_ , makes her heart rate spike with panic. No. She can’t do that. Gozetta has unknowingly given her an excuse to avoid that calamity, and she is grateful. “I’d… be happy to try?”

 

Amilyn nods at her, then gracefully rises to her feet. She disappears into the dark earthen half of her home; a moment later she returns with a square metallic box in her hands. As she settles herself between Rey and Poe, her Gatalentan friends move the table to the side of the room, then begin clearing the pillows from the rug.

 

“Now,” she says. “It’s very simple. Just wave your hand over it.” Resting the touchboard in the palm of her left hand, Amilyn demonstrates with her right, and a hauntingly delicate melody is produced. She continues, lowering her hand then raising it, rolling and wiggling her fingers, making a fist then opening again. “See how the rhythm and pitch changes depending on the movement of your hand? Simple as can be. It’s actually very difficult to make bad music on the touchboard.”

 

From somewhere on the rug, where the Gatalentans have begun to teach a dance to the other members of the party— Lando, the most eager participant, but also Luke and Mara, Poe and Gozetta, Brixie and _him_ — Rey catches a snippet of something:

 

In an undertone, the Captain is asking Brixie, “Doesn’t… Rey want to dance?”

 

Frozen, ears pricked, Rey waits. He’s just being polite, she’s sure of it, and yet…

 

“Oh please,” Gozetta barges in, having also overheard, “she’s far too much of a mope for dancing. Trust me, she’s happier over there.”

 

Rey looks up from the touchboard then, right into the eyes of Captain Ben Solo. Again. Utter mortification consumes her; is that pity she detects in the slight downturn of his mouth? He looks somewhat dubious, like maybe he is unconvinced by Gozetta’s claim.

 

She’s so tempted to reach out. Maybe, after all this time, she’ll still be able to feel him in the Force. For a half a second, she considers it. But… what if she’s right? What if he pities her?

 

Never mind. She focuses again on Amilyn’s face, listening to her suggestions for the touchboard. When the Admiral passes the instrument over, Rey takes it, and begins to experiment.

 

“Look at that!” says Amilyn, kindly. “You’re a natural!”

 

With that, she rejoins the Gatalentans and begins assisting in their dancing tutorial. A few minutes later, the group is ready.

 

There’s a slow, purposeful cadence to the dance, so Rey undulates her fingers over the touchboard at an equally slow pace, a hairsbreadth above it, and is rewarded with something dulcet and lilting. She figures it must be appropriate because Amilyn, holding Lando’s hand firmly as she guides him through the steps, gives her an appreciative nod.

 

 _He_ does not so much as peep her way again, and though he dances with each of the Gatalentans in turn, he always returns to Brixie, who could not possibly look more delighted.

 

Rey forces herself not to watch. Instead she focuses on her fingers: thin, bony, calloused, but if she really thinks about it, beautiful in their own right: muscle and bone and veins and flesh. Along with this magical little box, all that is needed to produce enchanting music. How wonderful. How safe, how painless.

 

She focuses on that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, after they’ve eaten Larma’s stew with some freshly baked flatbread, Rey overhears Amilyn lamenting to Luke: “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed forever.”

 

A ray of light shines through the mental fog. “Get what fixed?” she asks, not even stopping to ponder the etiquette of posing such a question to her host; something is broken, and Rey is good with her hands.

 

Amilyn turns to her. “No, it’s nothing, only… my hydro-reclamation processor. It must be fifty years old at this point, and it’s been causing more problems than it’s worth lately.”

 

“Let me look at it,” she says.

 

“You really don’t—”

 

“Please?” Rey entreats. “I’d…”

 

She hesitates, contemplating the room full of people, still sipping tea and snacking on a platter full of crisp, colorful vegetables.

 

“I could use a little break from all this, I think.”

 

Luke’s eyebrows jump sympathetically, and he gives a thoughtful stroke of his beard before shrugging at Amilyn. “You know, Rey had an ancient moisture vaporator on Jakku that she somehow maintained for ages.” To her, he adds, “I still can’t believe you were able to keep that thing alive for as long as you did. It broke almost the second I laid a hand on it.”

 

“Oh no,” she gasps. Luke shrugs again, with a detached chuckle.

 

“Hmm.” Amilyn’s blue eyes narrow, considering her. When she breaks into a smile, there is something secretive about it, but Rey does her best to return it anyway. “Alright. Come with me.”

 

Outside, in front of the dome, there is a wide wooden deck that extends out over the hill. Amilyn leads her to the far end of the deck, where the ungainly machine sits.

 

“You really don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to,” she says, as Rey pulls off the plasti-shield cover and begins to inspect its innards. “You’re supposed to be having fun!”

 

Rey smiles shyly back at her. “This _is_ fun, for me.”

 

“Well, do want some company, at least?” Amilyn offers, leaning against the crystalplex balustrade.

 

“Would you be offended if I told you I didn’t?”

 

Amilyn shakes her head, bemused. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

 

“Thank you, Admiral Holdo.”

 

“Please,” she says, “Call me Amilyn. And… thank _you,_ Rey.”

 

Rey gets to tinkering. One part dreamy haze and one part laser focus, she makes no note of how much time is passing; she simply works. At one point, she feels someone watching her, and turns just in time to catch sight of the Captain’s broad shoulders as he retreats back into the dome.

 

Her mind reels for a moment, at that. Was he outside with her? For how long? Was he watching her?

 

But as quickly as it's come, the worry passes, like a wind-blown cloud. She shrugs to herself, and resumes her inspection and repairs. Really, the processor is not in that bad of shape; it only requires a few wires to be connected more securely, a few bolts to be tightened. When she is at last satisfied with the state of its inner workings, she gives the thing an experimental boot-up, and is gratified to hear it run with only a slight purr, like a sleepy loth-kitten.

 

“There,” she sighs, pleased, granting herself a second of self-congratulation. “All better.”

 

She’s covered in a sheen of perspiration, from her labor and the hot, humid air, when she returns to the dome. The abrupt chill of its air-conditioning makes her flesh pimple, and hastily, she wipes her face dry with the tail of her tunic. Then she makes for the seat she’d formerly occupied… but she finds, once she’s circumvented the ring of pillows, that the Captain is occupying it, his hands tightly clasped around his knees. He’s deep in conversation with Poe.

 

Maybe… she can be brave. Just a little bit. The pillow next to him is free. Maybe she can sit beside him for a little while, and remember. Maybe some polite words can pass between them. She treads closer.

 

“Ah!” he says, when he sees her. He surges to his feet, and steps away from the pillow.

 

“No!”

 

It comes out more desperate and breathless than Rey intended, but he’s looking at her, really looking at her, even as he backs away, and she wants him to come back, damn it all, she wants to sit beside him. Is that so much to ask?

 

“No,” she tries again. “It’s fine!” She gestures to the two empty pillows. “There’s another one right—”

 

“It’s your seat.” His voice is flat, completely devoid of feeling. “My mistake.”

 

And then before she can object, he re-settles himself next to one of the very pretty Gatalentan women on a large pillow meant for two.

 

Biting the inside of her cheek, Rey drops down onto the abandoned pillow. It’s still warm from him.

 

Perhaps her chin does wobble. Perhaps her heart does clench painfully in her chest.

 

But she does _not_ cry.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Somewhere, over the course of a couple weeks’ worth of dinners and get-togethers, two things happen: Brixie and the Captain grow closer, and he and Poe Dameron strike up something of a friendship. Or maybe they just rekindle a childhood acquaintance.

 

In any case, they begin doing flight exercises together on days when they’re both free. Which means not only is the Captain present at dinners in the Great House most evenings, but he also occasionally shows up at the bungalow during the day, looking either for Poe or for Brixie.

 

He never does more than nod at Rey and although he is always civil with her sister, Rey strongly suspects that he holds a lingering resentment against Gozetta, for her loyalties.

 

( _And maybe for other things too,_ her treasonous heart taunts, hoping against hope. Because it’s possible that his resentment also stems from Rey’s choosing Gozetta and the rest of her family over him… isn’t it? For sending him away, for staying behind without him? What she wouldn’t give, for the opportunity to ask him. About that, and about everything that has passed.)

 

There is always a split second of shock, just like she felt in that alley of Old Hannatown, when he suddenly materializes in all his handsomeness and composure, without Rey having been given time to prepare.

 

But she acclimates.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Most nights, exhausted from the amount of socializing that living with the Damerons requires of her, Rey is asleep the moment her head hits the pillow.

 

More and more in her dreams, she meets _him_. Night after night, dream after dream, they find each other under the bare, twisted branches of the Dameron’s uneti tree. And when she sees him, everything is how it once was: they are young and in love, they have not hurt each other, the future holds only possibility. Tenderly, he divests her of her clothing, and she of his.

 

Only Chandrila’s two moons bear witness to their love. All of the galaxy grinds to a halt; like they are its last two souls, and everything depends on this.

 

She never remembers anything in the morning, except for the wispy, evanescent sense that for a time, she knew complete and utter happiness.

 

 

. . .

 

 

One afternoon, while Rey is in the main room of the bungalow, reading and spending time with her nephews, Brixie shows up.

 

“Gozetta around?” she asks, with a kind of faux casualness that’s unusual for her. “She said she’d help me with my makeup, if I ever wanted.”

 

Rey smiles to cover her confusion; Brixie rarely does much to enhance her appearance, and she has to wonder what has brought on this sudden interest in a makeover, when she’s always seemed so content with her natural beauty.

 

But it doesn’t take more than a moment’s study of Brixie to figure it out. She recognizes the flush of the younger woman’s cheeks, the jittery way she moves through the room, hugging her nephews.

 

She’s excited. She’s in love, or at the very least, infatuated. Rey would bet her life on it.

 

“She’s in the ‘fresher, dying her roots,” Rey tells her. “You can just go on in, she won’t mind.”

 

“Thanks!”

 

Brixie has already turned and left the room; the floral and citrus notes of her perfume linger in the air behind her.

 

Having dutifully swallowed her daily dose of pain, since tonight is a rare instance when the Damerons won’t be entertaining guests as both Shara and Kes have come down with a head cold, Rey thinks that will be it. As usual, she prides herself on this: she does not cry.

 

Except that the next time she looks up from the dining table, where she’s rested her borrowed datapad, in order to issue a firm reminder to Weir that hitting Little Poe is not allowed, she is stunned to see Captain Solo standing beside the sofa, casually dressed, looking unmoored and uncertain.

 

“…Hello,” he says, while surveying the room for another second, like an assassin might be lying in wait somewhere.

 

Rey swallows, hard. He’s speaking to her. They’re speaking. It’s been eight years of nothing, then two weeks or so of brusque nods and indirect jabs, and now… just like that, out of the blue, there is a reprieve.

 

“H—hi.”

 

“Dameron told me…” he falters, then swallows, the sharp jut of his throat bobbing anxiously, before he continues, “his sister wanted to see me.”

 

“Oh, she’s—”

 

“Is she here?”

 

Rey nods. “Yes, she’s… er, just helping Gozetta with something. She’ll be out in a moment, I think.”

 

“…Good.” He does a slight shuffle, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

 

Her only consolation is that he looks every bit as uncomfortable as she feels. It’s not much, but it’s something. For a moment, they gawk at each other. Then one of the boys lets out a deafening screech, and Rey must break the eye contact to check on them.

 

They’re fine, of course. It hasn’t gotten any easier for her to discern the happy shrieks from the angry ones since she’s arrived, but this one, at least, seems to be of the delighted variety.

 

“Right,” she gasps, when she meets his eyes again. He’s still hovering by the sofa. “Want to… sit down?”

 

Wordlessly, he does so, choosing a chair at the other end of the table. Another moment passes, he clears his throat.

 

“Would you like some caf?” she asks, just as he mutters: “She wants me to see her bee hives.”

 

“Okay.” Rey cannot think of a single better response; all she can muster is that one word, a hoarse whisper.

 

“No… thank you,” he replies, belatedly.

 

Now there is nothing left to do but wait, because neither seems to know what should come next. The air becomes suffocating, loaded with their deadened silence, each second more awkward than the last. It takes every ounce of Rey’s self-control not to fidget or jump up and leave, abandoning the Captain to her nephews, who have momentarily gone quiet.

 

And then:

 

“Give it ba-a-a-a-ck, Poe!”

 

Weir’s scream again interrupts the moment, but the interruption is welcome this time. The problem is immediately evident: Little Poe has snatched up his brother’s model starfighter and begun to run around the room with it, emulating the sound of firing laser cannons.

 

“Aunt Rey!”

 

“Poe, give it back,” she mutters, shooting a leery glance at the Captain. He is eyeballing Little Poe as the older boy scampers about, taking no notice of Rey’s order. He looks concerned, or maybe vaguely nauseated.

 

Weir races over to Rey’s chair, his face beet red and bearing all the warning signs of an impending temper tantrum. “Aunt Rey!” he wails, stomping his feet. “Aunt _Re-e-ey_!”

 

“Poe!” she shouts, with slightly more vehemence. “Give the toy back!”

 

Still, she is ignored.

 

Not a second later, she feels Weir’s small hands digging into her shoulders, and hears his irate whine from behind her: “Make him give it ba-a-ack!”

 

Little Poe climbs up onto the sofa, where he swoops the starfighter through the air and barks out, “Gold Leader, do you copy? Come in, Gold Leader!”

 

Weir’s fingers are like talons, scrabbling for purchase in the tender flesh above her collarbones. In an attempt to dislodge him, Rey rises from the chair, but he holds on tight. Forced to bear his own weight, hanging onto her as his feet leave the floor, his fingers dig in deeper. Rey yelps, in alarm and pain:

 

“Oi! That hurts—let go!”

 

“It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s _mine_! Make him give it—”

 

The demand is cut short and just as abruptly, the agonizing pressure of his fingers is gone. She whirls around in a sweat, terrified that he has fallen and hurt himself again.

 

But he hasn’t. He’s dangling in the air, each of his flanks grasped securely by two big hands. Captain Solo holds him at a remove from his body, his arms locked, like Weir is a bomb that might detonate at any moment. And indeed, Weir kicks back at him fiercely, trying to free himself. The attack is futile, however. He cannot reach the Captain with his short legs.

 

“Apologize to your Aunt,” he grits out. “For hurting her.”

 

“Let me down!”

 

“Apologize.”

 

There’s another second of thrashing before Weir recognizes that he’s been bested, at which point the fight goes out of him; he simply hangs there in the Captain’s hands, bewildered.

 

Then his large brown eyes fill with tears. “I’m s-sorry,” he blubs, the very picture of contrition.

 

“It’s…” she can barely speak, she is so overcome by the Captain’s gesture. He continues to hold Weir in outstretched hands; she knows the boy’s weight all too well, and cannot help but be impressed that does so without straining himself.

 

His dark eyes are blazing with something, some unspoken emotion, when she finally brings herself to look at him. He seems furious, and the thought— he is angry? On her behalf?— has her sputtering uselessly a few more seconds before she finally manages, “It’s fine, it’s fine. Only… please don’t climb on me, Weir. I’m not a gazebo.”

 

Weir sniffles out a little huff at that, and the Captain carefully returns him to his feet. Before the boy can make a move towards his brother, the Captain pivots in the older boy’s direction.

 

“Poe,” he thunders, his deep voice full of command. Little Poe’s head snaps up, eyes wide, the proverbial thissermount caught in the headlights.

 

“Give that back to your brother.”

 

Begrudgingly, Little Poe clambers down from the sofa, trudges over to Weir, and hands back the starfighter.

 

“And… say you’re sorry,” Rey adds, finally getting her bearings again.

 

“Sorry,” he mutters. Weir shrugs, holding no grudges now that he has his toy back.

 

Rey nods haltingly at them both. “Right… good. Now, uh, play… nice.”

 

The boys settle down once more on the carpet, their altercation seemingly already forgotten. Meanwhile, the adults are left standing by the table, eyes locked and motionless, as though they’re both frozen in carbonite. He blinks at her, wary. His mouth opens, then shuts again.

 

Desperate to use this chance to say something, _anything_ , Rey takes a deep breath; she has no idea where the sentence will end if she begins it, but she knows she must try. Maybe, she decides, now is the time for apologies, the time for forgiveness. Maybe she can ask him about the scar and the war and Han and his mother and Luke, and he can ask her… anything. Anything he wants. Maybe now is their time to begin again.

 

“I—”

 

“Why, hello,” a voice says flirtatiously. Brixie’s, she realizes, tearing her eyes away from his and glancing towards the hallway. “There you are, Captain Solo!”

 

Brixie is leaning against a wall, dressed all in black and draped in a cloak made from soft burgundy velvoid. Her face is painted beautifully, courtesy of Gozetta; a dark lip sets off her large brown eyes, with subtle eyelash paint and rouge to complete the look.

 

Rey suddenly feels very plain, standing there in her simple tunic and leggings and bare feet, hair a mess, face the same as it ever was, only older. _It shouldn’t matter,_ she reminds herself. _It doesn’t matter._

 

“Here I am,” he says, summoning up an almost-smile. Brixie reaches a hand out to him, wiggling her fingers. Without looking over at Rey, he strides forward to take it.

 

And like that, they are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. Some notes?
> 
> Where is [Hosnian Prime](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hosnian_Prime), [Warlentta](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Warlentta), [Hays Minor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hays_Minor), and [Kessel](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kessel)? [Galactic City](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_City)?
> 
> Who's who, gffa edition: [Larma D'Acy](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Larma_D%27Acy), [Mon Mothma](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mon_Mothma), [pirates](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pirate)? [Yes! Pirates.]
> 
> What is an [entheogenic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogen) substance?
> 
> What's a [nanny droid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nanny_droid/Legends)? [BX-778](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BX-778)?
> 
> [Pouf couches](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pouf_couch): why not me?
> 
> More fabrics! [Fineweave sherculién-cloth](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fineweave_sherculi%C3%A9n-cloth), [auropyle](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Auropyle_fabric), and [velvoid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Velvoid).
> 
> What are [crystalplex](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Crystalplex) and [carbonite](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Carbonite)?
> 
> What's a [priprak](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Priprak)? [Loth-kitten](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Loth-cat)? [Thissermount](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Thissermount)?
> 
> I'd like to eat some [lavender treebread](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lavender_treebread) with a nice cup of [Gatalentan tea](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gatalentan_tea). [I'm claiming artistic license on the tea. I know it is referenced in _Bloodline_ and that Leia drinks it; there is not much info about Gatalenta and interpreting the word 'tea' in the context of Beatnik [slang](http://time.com/3815347/jazz-marijuana-history/) was just... too interesting to pass up. Let's say there are different varieties of the plant.]
> 
> What's a [seven-string hallikset](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Seven-string_hallikset) and the [touchboard](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Touchboard)?
> 
> Why did [let's assume for the sake of this story] Captain Solo name his ships the [_Naberrie_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/House_Naberrie) and the [_Correllian Hound_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellian_hound)?
> 
> Other ships: what's a [_Starhawk_ -class battleship](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Starhawk-class_battleship), [diplomatic barge](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Diplomatic_barge), and [Personal Luxury Yacht 3000](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_Luxury_Yacht_3000)?
> 
> Did I use this world-building opportunity to stare longingly at pictures of [geodesic domes](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9a/00/41/9a00418892d991fadd5f6c426e605bb9--geodesic-dome-homes-dome-house.jpg) in the [wilderness](http://estaticos.expansion.com/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2016/11/08/14785995275151.jpg)? [I did.]
> 
> Some more inspo for Gatalenta: [geothermal waters of Iceland](https://static.videezy.com/system/resources/thumbnails/000/004/972/original/blue-lagoon-geothermal-waters-in-iceland-4k.jpg) and [the terrace farms of Vietnam](https://www.travelseewrite.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Terrace-Farming-Sapa-Vietnam.jpg).
> 
> What is [phototropic shielding](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Phototropic_shielding) and a [hydro-reclamation processor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hydro-reclamation_processor)?
> 
> Space! What's a [gravity well](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gravity_well) and what's a [battle station](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_station)?
> 
> What was the rank system in the [Imperial Navy](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imperial_Navy/Legends?file=Essential-Guide-To-Warefare-Imperial-Ranks.png)? [My ad-hoc guide for the New Republic Navy.]
> 
> Okay, that's all from me, I think! Thank you for reading! ❤


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yes; he had done it. She was in the [skimmer], and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest. She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent. This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before. She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One quick thing before the chapter: a _fantastic_ piece of [art](https://twitter.com/tm2taughtmefam1/status/1094860643092459520) to share with everyone, depicting Rey and Captain Solo and Brixie enjoying some Gatalentan tea, courtesy of the very kind and talented [tm2taughtmefamlaw](https://twitter.com/tm2taughtmefam1). Thank you again, friend, I love it so much! 💗

**42 ABY.**

 

In the heart of Lake Sah’ot— a massive body of water in the Chandrilan countryside so pristinely clear that on a sunny day a person can sail a boat along its glassy surface and observe the swaying green rockweed that grows on its bed, many meters below— there sits a jatz club. A very upscale, very exclusive jatz club.

 

The club is constructed entirely from clari-crystalline, transparent walls and roof and floor, so that while patrons dine inside, they may watch fauna gather on the shores and fish swim beneath their feet. Every night, the house band sets up on a revolving stage in the middle of the club, and their smooth, sophisticated musical stylings serve as backdrop to the political finaglings, business deals, and general revelry of Chandrila’s high society.

 

At sunset, regardless of the season, it is the most popular spot onworld for cocktails and dinner, rendering it almost impossible for most citizens to get a reservation. But somehow, with a little help from Senator Organa, the Dameron family manages to snag a round table for ten on the forty-third anniversary of Shara Bey and Kes’s wedding. And right by the windowed wall too, so they can watch the sky stitch itself into a wispy patchwork of honey and peach and orchid as they sip Bespin Breezes and whet their appetites with fresh skor-fin cured in jun-lime juice.

 

To fully honor the occasion, the Dameron boys are cajoled into bathing and donning their best dress clothes; the Dameron women pull out their finest frocks, the Dameron men dust off their gaberwool tuxedo coats. Gozetta, after much vacillation, settles once again on her black gemweb silk gown, dressed up with a set of Lothalian fire ruby earrings and necklace.

 

As for Rey, she also dithers for a while. That afternoon, standing in the guest bedroom wrapped in only a towel, she scrutinizes the two gowns she now owns, unable to decide.

 

First, there is the emerald Fleuréline weave, modest in the front with a high collar but dipping so low in the back that it exposes the dimples to either side of her spine. She tries it on. Its thin material clings to her arms, hips, bust, and thighs, then flares at the knee, flowing into a short train behind her. The illusion it creates is one of curves, but also of grace. The color brings out the green in her eyes, and the buttery soft weave feels, to Rey, like being swathed in warm water.

 

It’s certainly a contender.

 

Carefully, she disrobes and places the gown on the sleeper. Then she tries on the other. It’s much heavier and shinier, layers of shimmersilk in a shade of silver so light it’s almost white, hemmed with jet-black synthfur. The gown’s neckline swoops low, displaying a chest that is just slightly fuller than it was a few weeks ago; then it cinches in an empire waist and sweeps down to the floor, where its synthfur hemline gently brushes the heated carpet. The points of its long bell-shaped sleeves hang almost to her knees. The fur is soft, even if it adds weight to the gown which renders it less sultry, more regal.

 

The fabric lives up to its name; as she turns this way and that in the mirror, the gown shimmers in the lamplight like the Silver Sea on a sunny day. If Rey were to flatter herself, she’d say the green gown is more seductive holostar, while the silver is more dignified sovereign. But maybe the latter is what she wants, if she’s going to meet the Princess of Alderaan.

 

Rey smooths her calloused hands down the front of the gown, enjoying its luster. She feels safe, and warm, and protected. It’s a more prudent choice, now that the nights have turned sharp with cold. And the dress is like armor, isn’t it? Maybe it will shield her from whatever acrimony the evening has in store. Gozetta has offered to braid her hair in a crown again, and “fix up her face”; by the time she steps out the door, she’ll be ready for anything. For battle, even.

 

She takes one final look at herself, and sighs. Shimmersilk and synthfur it is, then.

 

(There is also a notion that occurs to her, quickly suppressed, but nevertheless true: the emerald gown evokes a sense of glamour. Romance. Maybe she’s hoping that someday, something romantic might happen to her— something so romantic that it would necessitate wearing that gown. Maybe some part of her is still holding out for that day.)

 

 

. . .

 

 

The jatz club’s seaskimmer ferries the group away from the lakeside landing pad, over the water, chill winds nipping at their faces and ruining Gozetta’s carefully styled curls, before depositing them on the clari-crystalline dock of the club. After they disembark, they make their way inside. It’s easy to spot Captain Solo and the woman whom Rey recognizes to be Senator Organa. They’re sharing a cocktail at the bar, flanked on either side by fashionable people who are doing their best not to gawk at the duo.

 

Like Poe and Kes, he is wearing a gaberwool tuxedo coat. And she is regal in a dark metallic wool gown, over which she wears a long, heavy cape. She looks almost the same as she did eight years ago, when Rey watched her in a holoprojection of a news bulletin, standing before the Senate while her deepest, darkest secret was revealed. Only… maybe a bit harder, around the eyes. Maybe her spine is a bit stiffer. In any case, the two of them look like they belong here. The Damerons do too, she thinks, casting her gaze across her party.

 

Everyone does but her. Even in all her new finery, with a bit of Gozetta’s makeup and hair-styling, she knows herself to be a desert rat and a fraud; glancing around at the lavishly dressed patrons, the tasteful table settings and the beautiful female singer crooning on stage with her band, Rey half expects one of the tuxedoed waiters to approach her at any second and insist she vacate the premises.

 

“Kes!” cries the senator, her voice a warm throaty rasp. “Shara!”

 

The group starts towards the bar but she’s faster; drink in hand, she’s already barreling at them.

 

“Leia,” Shara returns, readily accepting the senator’s embrace. “It’s been too long.”

 

“Truly. Can you believe Yavin was over forty years ago? Feels like yesterday.”

 

“So does our wedding,” Kes quips.

 

She smiles at them before tilting her head at the members of the party with whom she’s less familiar. The Captain lumbers up behind her, sipping from a tumbler of something amber on ice. His eyes flick over everyone… even Rey. Do they linger a moment longer than she would’ve expected? Is that a hint of surprise in the quick rise of his brows, only visible for an instant, before he reigns it in?

 

But then, surprise is natural she supposes, considering how she must have appeared to him back on Jakku, compared to how she must seem now. Then, she was sweaty and grubby and still wild with youth and her first love. And now? Staid, maybe. Matronly? A shade, surely— a faded morose shadow.

 

She can see he’s about to speak; in anticipation, wondering if he might address her, she holds completely still.

 

“Leia,” he says, resting one hand on his mother’s shoulder, a familiar gesture that causes Rey to feel as though there is a heavy stone in the pit of her stomach, “You remember Brixie.”

 

“Of course I do. How are you, dear?”

 

Brixie beams at her, they exchange pleasantries for a moment, and then Leia turns to Poe. “And you, Commander Dameron. How’s retired life treating you?”

 

“It’s… yeah,” he huffs. “Interesting. Busy. But good.”

 

“You sure about that?” she teases, but Poe just grimaces, then half-turns, wrapping an arm around Gozetta’s waist.

 

“This is my wife, Gozetta, and our boys, Poe Junior and Weir.”

 

Another round of pleasantries. Gozetta at least manages to get through the interaction without saying something hopelessly blunt or tactless, and the boys— having been warned earlier that any mischief while at the club would lead to many sugar-less days as penance— are well-behaved.

 

But Rey’s hands have begun to sweat, because there is only one person left to be introduced to Leia. This is her moment, at last. Who will do it? Will _he_?

 

“And, uh,” it is Poe who takes up the mantle, “this is my sister-in-law. Rey.”

 

In an unimpeachably polite tone that lacks even a hint of recognition, Leia says, “Hello Rey. Very nice to meet you.” She offers a hand, which Rey numbly clasps. They shake.

 

Her stomach sinks to her feet, weighted down by the stone.

 

For a moment, the dark eyes of both mother and son bore into her; their faces are not exact duplicates but the intense scrutiny of being beheld by the two of them is identical. And in neither face can she detect a single trace of their emotion. Their looks are different, but the practiced stoicism undoubtedly runs in the family.

 

And before Rey can mount some sort of equally politic response— in which she pretends she hasn’t longed to meet his mother for years, as if she doesn’t have a hundred questions for the woman— the hostess appears before them, informing them with a toothy smile that their table is ready.

 

The party turns, following the hostess; the time for introductions has passed. Rey brings up the rear, and is glad for it, since she trips on the hem of her dress no less than three times on the way to the table. It also gives her a chance to take a deep shuddering breath, and ask herself: does Leia _really_ not know about her?

 

Her tone suggested that she does not.

 

That hurts. Maybe more than breaking things off with him, more than seeing him in that alley, more than every single time Brixie has casually touched his arm while laughing— combined.

 

Did their time together mean so little? Or so much? Is she his secret, as he is hers? There are so many questions, all tangled up in mind and body and soul. Once again she feels the hot flush of fever, a bittersweet tincture of hope and despair coursing through her veins. But there is no recourse; there is no respite. She can’t exactly run screaming from the club and throw herself into the lake, although she’d like to. Instead, wordlessly, she takes her seat at the table, and keeps her eyes trained on the fine white tablecloth.

 

The battle, as it turns out, is an internal one. One for which there is neither armor nor shield.

 

And it has begun early this evening.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Of course,” Captain Solo is replying to Poe, halfway through the meal— the sky outside has blackened, stars are visible through the glass ceiling, the reflection of the club’s lights skitter across the lake’s dark waters— “I remember the battles most of all. Pressy’s Tumble, Ovanis, Takodana, D’Qar, Akiva, the Inamorata—”

 

“Ah, Ovanis,” Poe interjects. “Where Finn defected.”

 

The Captain’s expression turns thoughtful, and he looks to his mother. “How is Finn, these days?”

 

Leia scoffs. “Quickly outgrowing my mentorship, if we’re being honest. I’m not sure he ever even needed it in the first place—he’s a born politician. Trustworthy. Sincere. Honest. _Handsome_.”

 

“Why, Leia, does someone have a crush?” Shara asks, laughing along with her old friend.

 

“Oh please, I’m a million years old.” Leia’s laughter dissolves into an impish grin. “…But I’m not dead.”

 

Faintly, with eyes that have gone distant, Poe says, “He must’ve saved my life three or four times over during the war.” He sounds adrift in his memories. “My fighter was practically vaped during the show at Ovanis. And there I was, sitting in the brig of the _Ravenous_ , thinking to myself: well, Dameron, you’ve done it now. This is how you die.” Gozetta makes an indignant squawk, so he clutches her hand in his. “Obviously I didn’t, honey. ‘Cause outta nowhere, the blast doors of my cell open. And there’s Finn, a regular bucket head, rambling at me through his helmet. Thought he was my executioner for a half a second.”

 

Brixie rolls her eyes. “I’m pretty sure we’ve all heard this one at least a hundred times.”

 

“I haven’t,” Rey ventures. She gives Poe what she hopes is a supportive smile. “And I’d like to.”

 

“As would I,” Leia agrees. “I read your report later, but there never seemed to be time for you to tell me the whole story, personally.”

 

Brixie huffs at Poe's smirk, but goes quiet.

 

“Not back then, there wasn’t.” He barks out a rough laugh. “Nope. Not much time for anything. Yeah. So—yeah. Finn. FN-2187 at the time. He takes me to one of the docking bays, right? And I ask him, ‘Hey pal, what’s the idea here?’ And he goes on and on about realizing he needs to do the right thing, about how he’s not a soldier, about how he’s seen the light and realizes the evils of the First Order.” Poe leans back, amused with the memory. “So I cut through the bantha fodder. ‘You need a pilot,’ I said. And he goes: ‘Yeah, I need a pilot. You wanna get out of here or not?’”

 

“How brave.” Rey could not keep the words from escaping if she wanted to; she feels them too keenly. To have the courage to leave it all behind… she wishes she could meet this Finn person, and ask him how he did it.

 

Leia’s mouth flattens to a thin line, her eyes go even steelier. “Especially considering what we now know about the First Order’s conscription program,” she fumes. “Barbaric—taking children, raising them for war without a family or a name or a life of their own.”

 

“Torture,” Kes declares, outrage like a dark cloud passing over his features.

 

No one at the table disagrees.

 

It’s Poe who breaks through his anger to say, “Finn has more guts than most, although he’d be the first to deny it. Pretends like he doesn’t, pretends like he has no skin in the fight. But you know what? He stayed with us. He didn’t fight and we never woulda asked him to, but he gave us valuable intel for _years_. Saved a lot of New Republic lives. Saved a lot of stormtrooper lives, too.”  

 

“A hero,” sighs Brixie.

 

Poe nods. “Part of it was that thing he had going with my head mechanic Rose for a while—like a—ah, what’s that thing, Goz, when the baby bird follows around the thing it thinks is its mother?”

 

Looking up from Little Poe’s plate, where she has been trying to persuade him to eat his scalefish fillets, she supplies: “Imprinting.”

 

“Yeah. He imprinted on her, for a while there. But mostly—that was just him. The kid had heart.”

 

“Has,” the Captain corrects. “Something Batuu appreciates.”

 

“Are the results in already?” Poe rests his elbow on the table, inquisitive. “Last I checked, he was in the lead—but the thing hadn’t been called yet.”

 

“One of the benefits of being a fellow senator,” Leia says. “I get the inside scoop on these things, ahead of time.” Her grin is rakish as she winks at Poe. It makes Rey’s heart hurt, for how much it reminds her of Han Solo.

 

“Well, whaddya know.” Poe lets out a gusty whoop, then raises his glass of green champagne. Everyone else follows suit. “To Finn,” he crows, “the young senator of Batuu. May he help clean up that mess in the Outer Rim.”

 

“To Finn,” they all intone, before sipping at their drinks.

 

A thoughtful lull follows, with some eating, and some quiet side conversations; to Rey’s right, Shara and Kes steal furtive glances at their daughter as Brixie, on Rey’s left, and beside Brixie, the Captain, lean their heads together to chat. Kes turns to murmur something to Leia, his chin tucked down, directing the thought only to Leia’s ear. She laughs, then shrugs and nods.

 

“You know, I’ll be honest… I wasn’t so sure at first,” Poe admits to the table, at length. “Finn’s a good guy. But he’s nice. Even after everything he went through—he’s still a nice guy. Too nice for politics, I thought. But then I managed to catch a couple of his speeches live on the HoloNet.”

 

“And?” Leia gloats, looking for all the world like a proud parent.

 

Poe throws his hands up in surrender. “Hey, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong! Maker knows Holdo taught me that. The guy’s a natural—Batuu is lucky to have him.”

 

“I do think it’s important to him—the cause, that is,” Leia notes. One eyebrow raises. “Perhaps a certain… mechanic… encouraged that need he has to help others. And to make sure what happened to him _doesn’t_ happen again.”

 

The Captain nods, wearing a lopsided smirk almost identical to his mother’s. “Perhaps she did.”

 

“It’s admirable.” Brixie shakes her head appreciatively. “Really.”

 

Her hand rests on the Captain’s forearm, Rey notices. He either has _not_ taken notice of it, or knows that it’s there, and does not mind. She swallows thickly at the thought of the latter, as Brixie goes on: “You could understand if the guy just wanted to run away and hide, forever. Can you imagine, being forced into the army as a child?” She screws her face up. “Kriffing grim.”

 

“Language,” scolds Shara, but her tone is mild, more reflex than actual censure.

 

“Could we talk about less grim things, perhaps?” Gozetta suggests tartly. She glances at Weir and groans, licks her thumb, then reaches across Little Poe’s plate to wipe a dark smudge from her younger son’s forehead. “There _are_ children present.”

 

Poe chuckles darkly. “You don’t think they want to hear their old man’s war stories?”

 

“Let’s give it a few years,” she says, with a roll of her eyes. Her flippant reply earns another laugh from Poe, who leans over, pressing an apologetic kiss to her cheek.

 

Brixie bobs her head in agreement. “Yes, lighter is good. Ben, tell the boys about Cloud City,” she directs, cheerily. “I’ve never been on a gas giant—I’d _love_ to see it someday.”

 

Weir glances up from the fish sticks he has been mashing into a paste. “What’s a Cloud City?”

 

“What it sounds like,” the Captain replies. “A disk-shaped city in the clouds of Bespin. It floats there, thanks to repulsorlifts and tractor beam generators.”

 

Rey remembers the faded postcard of Cloud City back in her room, on the back of which is sketched a profile of his face. She bites the inside of her cheek, and trains her eyes on her plate.

 

“Whoa,” comes Weir’s dazzled response, his eyes round as saucers, the way they get when Shara hands him a fizzer-sweet. “What do they eat?”

 

“Food. Normal food. Same as anybody.” His deep voice is tinged with amusement.

 

“Does anybody ever fall off the edge?”

 

“If they’re bad, they do,” Gozetta warns him. “If they eat too many sweets or don’t mind their parents.”

 

An audible gulp, from both boys, sets the table off in a bout of laughter.

 

“Whenever I wasn’t fighting or flying during the war, I was on Cloud City, or other ports like it,” the Captain recounts, more seriously, once everyone has quieted. “That wasn’t often, though. There wasn’t much time to appreciate the scenery.”

 

Kes and Shara nod, in harmony. “I remember that,” she sighs, and with equal wistfulness, Kes says:

 

“Me too.”

 

“That’s the thing about war, isn’t it?” muses Poe. “It takes you places you never thought you’d see. But… it steals the wonder of being there. Hard to appreciate the majesty of the Vulpinus Nebula or the splendor of Hapes or anything, really, when there’s an SSD on your six.”

 

Leia lets out a soft, sad sigh of her own. “Too true. Here’s hoping the Second Concordance will last longer than the First.”

 

“Is it signed and done with?” Kes asks.

 

“Just about.”

 

“ _I’ve_ been trying to convince this one that he should travel for a while,” Brixie pipes up. She pushes her shoulder against the Captain’s bicep, eliciting a tiny, rueful smile from him. “Live a little, see the galaxy.”

 

“Did plenty of that before the war,” he mutters.

 

He does not look at Rey when he says it, and yet she still feels the weight of those words, of the history behind them.

 

 _Are you talking about me?_ she wants to shout. _Was what we did living? I felt truly alive then, did you? Do you miss it? Do you miss me like I miss you?_

 

All those questions, right there on the tip of her tongue. She still says nothing.

 

Brixie tsks him then laughs, and he loosens, coughing out a small laugh along with her.

 

The conversation carries on to happier times— things that can be discussed in front of two impressionable young boys.

 

At some point, Shara leans over, and asks Rey in a low voice, “What do _you_ think of them?”

 

“Hm?” Taken aback by the question, she peers up from her plate of half-eaten fish cakes.

 

Shara smiles beatifically. “Brixie and Ben? It would be fitting—and they make a lovely couple. What do you think?”

 

“Oh, I…”

 

Her voice evaporates into a gasp, but Shara is waiting for a reply, still smiling. Everyone seated at the table is laughing, is relaxed, is happy. Everyone but her. And it’s the woman’s anniversary— a special day. To speak the truth would be to unburden herself on Shara, to complicate a situation that must be, from her perspective, uncomplicated and joyful.

 

She can’t do it.

 

“Yes, they seem—very happy,” she confirms, her voice strained. Shara nods, on the verge of saying something, when Kes taps her arm, diverting her attention back to him once again.

 

Rey forces herself to swallow around the lump that has formed in her throat. She looks down at the fish cakes, her appetite gone. She lifts her gaze, only intending a quick scan of the table, but something draws her eyes: Gozetta is staring at her, lips pursed and brow furrowed, like she is puzzling through a riddle.

 

When the sisters’ eyes meet, Gozetta cocks her head. An unspoken question.

 

Rey merely shakes hers, then re-trains her eyes on her rapidly congealing meal. The fish cakes are delicious, and she wants so badly to devour them, to have the satisfaction of a full belly; everything in her revolts at the idea of wasting food. But the leaden stone in her gut has grown larger, too large for her to even entertain the thought of eating. She’s not sure she could get any food down past the ache in her throat, anyway.

 

On one side of her, Shara, Kes, and Leia speak in low voices about marriage and babies. To the other, Brixie and the Captain carry on softly, no doubt flirting. Across the table, Poe and Gozetta are busy trying to convince their sons to eat their dinner.

 

For some time, no one speaks to Rey, and she speaks to no one.

 

But she does not cry.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The next morning is quiet. The boys are still asleep in their beds when Rey rises from hers, an unusual but welcome occurrence. On tiptoe, she creeps past their doors and into the main room, intent on procuring a cup of caf to bring back to bed with her.

 

Maybe it is because she is groggy, with only one eye properly open yet; maybe it is because she is preoccupied with not making any loud noises while she starts the caf machine’s brewing process; maybe it is because her sister is sitting in such unprecedented silence at the dining table. Whatever the reason, Rey doesn’t even notice Gozetta is in the room with her until she says, in a sullen mumble:

 

“Good morning to you _too_ , I suppose.”

 

“Goz!” she meeps, startled. “I didn’t see you.”

 

Her sister doesn’t look up from the datapad set on the table before her, clearly in a sulk.

 

Through the windows, Rey can see that it will be a beautiful day; the sun sets the sea ablaze in silver and cerulean, the trees bow forward in a whistling breeze. A few shreds of white cloud are strewn across an otherwise clear sky. She sighs.

 

Eventually, the caf machine trills a notice of its accomplishments, and Rey turns to pour two mugs. Then she shuffles over to the table.

 

“Anything good?” she asks, nodding at the datapad. She sets one mug on the table next to it.

 

Gozetta frowns, continuing to read. “You’ll only make fun of me.”

 

“I wouldn’t dare,” she vows. “What is it?”

 

“I’ve started a remote course from University of Coruscant.” Now she glances her way hesitantly. “On—intergalactic history and political relations.”

 

Rey beams down at her. As sometimes happens with Gozetta, she feels a sudden surge of fondness and protectiveness.

 

“How could I make fun of you for that?” She also hesitates, but only for a second. Gozetta is _trying_ ; she can too. “I’m proud of you,” she says.

 

A harrumph is the only response.

 

“Is it…” Rey worries her lip for a moment, unsure if this will topple the delicate balance they’ve reached, “because of what…”

 

“Captain Solo said to me, that night?”

 

“Yes,” she sighs. “Is it?”

 

Gozetta sucks in a sharp breath. “I didn’t care for that, no. That was very unpleasant.” She picks up the caf Rey has given her, staring into its dark depths for a while, before meeting Rey’s eyes. “Do you agree with him? With what he said, about the Empire? About my being… deluded?”

 

“I… think he’s right about the Empire, in any case.” She tries to gentle her answer by placing her hand on Gozetta’s.

 

“If he’s right, then Pa has been wrong all this time.”

 

What can Rey say to that? It’s something she accepted long ago. She shrugs a wordless assent.

 

Another sharp inhale. For one terrible second, Gozetta’s shoulders rise and fall, her brows knit together; she seems on the verge of tears. Then she gives a toss of her hair and like that, all signs of her distress are gone— a wrinkle ironed from a shirt. With a kind of steely calmness that Rey recognizes from Ergel and Verla, she asks, “Do you… want to hear something interesting I learned? From my course?”

 

“Yes. I do.” Taking a seat, Rey hides her relieved smile in a sip of caf.

 

“Contispex the First was aided in his rise to power by a secret society, then-unknown, now-notorious—the Malkite Poisoners,” she recites straight from the datapad. She looks up at Rey. “They targeted his political opponents, and were associated with the leaders of the Pius Dea cult—a nasty bunch. Who were supporters, obviously, of Contispex.”

 

“Huh. Imagine that,” Rey deadpans, one brow quirked. “Wonder if Pa knows?”

 

“Like he’d even care,” Gozetta grumbles, although there isn’t any resentment to it. Acceptance, maybe. Rey thinks she knows her sister well enough, after these weeks they’ve spent together, to detect that. And something else: a hint of what might be resignation.

 

They pass an ironic smile between them.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Gloves, gloves, I need my gloves!”

 

Brixie’s chipper voice rings out through the hallway a half second before she bursts into the main room, dressed in a heavily padded coat and thick swooshing pants, eyes roving desperately over the furnishings.

 

“Have you seen them?” she asks, circumventing the sofa where Rey and Gozetta have been lounging for most of the morning. It’s been a quiet couple days since their outing on Lake Sah’ot; bitter cold rain has kept everyone indoors, entertaining themselves with holos and hand after hand of sabacc.

 

“Not sure…” Rey replies, watching her in bemusement. Even as she speaks, Brixie has opened a closet door on the far side of the room, and begun to scrounge through its contents.

 

“I have the day off,” she explains from within, her voice muffled. “And I’ve talked the Skywalkers into coming with Ben and me to Rhinnal! I mentioned it to them the other day—how much I’ve always loved it there—and they said they’d never been, can you _believe_ that? I thought those two had been everywhere!”

 

She re-emerges from the closet empty-handed and frowning. “I’m almost positive I left my good winter gloves here yesterday…”

 

Casually, very casually, so casually that Rey hopes neither Brixie nor Gozetta will hear the hurt coloring her voice, she asks, “What’s on Rhinnal?”

 

Brixie’s smile is bright enough to light up the gloomy world outside. “The Zirfan Glacier! I love hiking up it. It’s gorgeous!” She passes over to the dining table and begins searching through the toys and various detritus covering its surface. As she searches, she smiles sheepishly at Gozetta and Rey, who remain seated, watching her. “‘Course, I would’ve asked if you two wanted to go, but I _know_ how much Goz dislikes the cold. _And_ hiking.”

 

Gozetta’s eyes narrow. “I’m very fond of both, actually,” she sneers, “and I’d love to go. When do we leave? I’ll just get changed.”

 

Almost at once, Brixie realizes her mistake. Her face blanches of all color as she stammers, “Oh, I don’t think—uh, I mean…”

 

But her feeble protest goes unheard; Gozetta has already risen from the sofa, nose in the air. Like she hasn’t a care in the world, she saunters towards her bedroom.

 

“Goz,” Rey calls after her. “We should just stay here with the boys, I think.”

 

Said boys are currently in their bedroom, ostensibly watching a holotoon, although Rey is almost certain— from the lack of laughing or shouting— that they’ve both gone down for a late-morning nap.

 

Gozetta shakes her head at Rey. “No, I want to go! Poe will be back any minute from the cellars. He’ll want to go too, I’m sure. And the nanny droid can handle them for one rainy afternoon.”

 

Next, she turns to her sister-in-law. “I’m _very_ excited for this, Brixie,” she says, eyes still narrowed, head cocked, “I haven’t been hiking in ages. And I’d _love_ the exercise.”

 

“Are you _sure_?” Brixie counters. “It’s gonna be a really long hike, at least three hours up the glacier. And the surface weather readings for Rhinnal aren’t exactly—”

 

Gozetta silences her with an accusatory finger wagged in her face. “Don’t leave without me!” she snaps. Before Brixie can get another word in, she flounces out of the room.

 

“ _Ugh_ ,” Brixie groans, with such pique that Rey wonders if she’s forgotten she’s not alone. Angrily, she throws her hands in the air. “Okay then? I guess?”

 

When she pivots towards the sofa, their eyes meet. Rey offers up an apologetic smile.

 

She sighs. “Well Rey, you should come along too!” Rey immediately begins drumming up a reason why she shouldn’t, but Brixie blurts out, “Please? You have that nice new wool coat now, and boots—we’ll lend you some ice cleats and walking poles and gloves and all that.”

 

Brixie forces a rictus smile; it’s a strange sight, compared to her usual happy-go-lucky mien.

 

“It’ll be fun! There’s a fantastic lodge in the mountains near the glacier. We always stop there to get hot chocolate. We’ll all—make a day of it.” Under her breath, she mutters, “I guess.”

 

Rey’s mind races. “Uh…”

 

 _“Please_.” Brixie shoots her a pointed look. “Come with us.”

 

Nothing. Not a single excuse occurs to her. “Oh—I suppose,” she says, conceding defeat. “Sure.”

 

“Fine. Good.” She must notice something near the underside of the sofa, because Brixie drops to her knees behind its back. When she pops back up, she’s clutching a pair of red gloves triumphantly. Mustering another half-hearted smile, she says, “Meet us up at the Great House when you’re ready?”

 

“Right…”

 

With that, she spins on her heel and leaves— much less cheerfully and light-footed than she’d entered.

 

After the front door hisses shut, Gozetta shouts from her bedroom, “Is she gone?”

 

Her head pops out into the dim hallway, a thick-knit winter cap pulled down low on her brow.

 

“Can you _believe_ she’d say that, that I hate hiking? I do _not_. The nerve! And of course, if I’d said no, I didn’t want to go hiking, it would’ve been, ‘Oh that Gozetta, such a stick in the mud! Ha ha, everyone knows she _hates_ fun!’” She scowls. “Well I’m not! I'm fun. I _am_ , I'm fun!”

 

Still rooted to the sofa, Rey shrugs absently at her. She’s too lost in her contemplation to bother with Gozetta right now. Brixie and him, Luke and Mara. Her heart sinks; it was meant to be a double date. Of course. Before Gozetta had butted in, that is.

 

Her sister marches across the main room and is swallowed up by the closet that Brixie was just searching. A second later she picks up again, her voice similarly muffled:

 

“Anyway, we’re stuck going now. I have to find my balaclava although I have absolutely _no_ idea where I left it!” She too returns from the closet without success, and makes for her bedroom again. “Gah! But where can it _be_? I’ll freeze to death without it…” her voice fades away as she disappears once more. Rey can hear the sounds of her rummaging through her room.

 

“Better dress warmly!” she advises, voice raised enough to carry out to the main room. “You’ll want it on Rhinnal. Trust me.”

 

At last— resigned to this disaster of an outing, pulling herself free from her spiraling misery at the thought of the two of them on a _date—_ Rey shudders and forces herself up off the sofa. She follows Gozetta’s path to her bedroom then lingers on its threshold, one shoulder wedged against the door jamb.

 

“Hey, Goz?”

 

“Yeah?” Her sister is already bundled up, and still in the process of pulling on layers. She pauses, eying Rey warily. “What? No cancelling on me.”

 

Rey closes her eyes, fights back her embarrassment, then opens them. In a small voice, she asks: “Er, what’s a glacier?”

 

 

. . .

 

 

A glacier, Rey learns, is a dense body of ice that is moving ever so slowly, driven by its own weight and gravity. The Zirfan Glacier is classified as a tidewater glacier, because it is making a slow, inexorable journey down into Rhinnal’s northern polar sea. At its summit, it is nestled into the lower half of one of the Sennes Mountains, which heave like a craggy black fortress all along the coast.

 

Not that she remembers a scrap of this information, once Mara Jade has landed the Skywalkers’ shuttle on a bit of icy shoreline near where the glacier’s edge meets the sea, and the boarding ramp lowers with a hiss and twin clouds of steam; the blast of air that gusts through the main hold is so frigid, cutting through Rey’s borrowed layers so sharply, that she almost gives up then and there. Volunteers to stay behind, guard the shuttle.

 

But everyone is already ambling down onto the ice, and Mara and Luke, seated in the small two-person snowskimmer they have brought with them, are staring at Rey expectantly, waiting for her to join the others so they can maneuver the skimmer out of the hold.

 

Down she goes.

 

Nothing could be enough to counteract Rhinnal’s cold. Within seconds, it feels as though it has burrowed under her skin, down deep into her bones. Her jaw aches, her eyes begin to water. She shivers.

 

The ice crunches under the spiked soles of her cleats, and they weigh her feet down. Even with her quarterstaff— more comfortable and familiar in her hand than the flimsy hiking pole Brixie had offered— she feels ungainly, like a stumbling newborn thissermount foal. As she gets her footing, she begins to take it all in. The whoosh and shurr of the sea, rushing up against the chipping glacier. The occasional splash as a piece breaks off and crashes into the water, off to join its floating icy brethren. The walking fish— fireheads, Brixie told her they are called— that dot the glacier, visible for only a moment as they skitter around before burning their way back down into the ice.

 

Heavy clouds sit low and heavy and dark; flurries of snow tumble lackadaisically down from the sky. Snow! How strange, how miraculous. She catches it on her mitten and then her tongue, in an attempt to taste it. It tastes like nothing. But a fresh kind of nothing, a clean nothing.

 

The western side of the glacier, farthest from them, is pierced by aquamarine-colored spikes of ice that rise up like imperious, jagged columns. As she lets her eyes follow the ice-cleat carved footpath up the eastern side, she marvels at how the glacier undulates in rolling hills, how the fissures run through it, deadly and gaping.

 

The Captain and Brixie joke quietly about something as they all adjust to the ice. He looks unfairly handsome, she thinks, in the same dark coat, boots, and gloves he was wearing that day she saw him in alley, his already burly form made bulkier by the clothes underneath and accessorized now with a heavy dark hood that hides his ears and hair from sight.

 

“We’ll meet you up at the lodge,” Luke tells them, as he runs through a systems check on the rickety old skimmer.

 

Poe smirks. “You sure you don’t want to hoof it with us?”

 

“We’ve done our fair share of hiking in our day. I think we’ll just enjoy the view from the speeder and the lodge, if it’s all the same to you,” is Mara’s airy reply. And then they’re off.

 

They stand around for a moment, watching the snowskimmer grow smaller, then disappear when they reach a distant fjord.

 

Gozetta snorts. “I can’t believe Mara is riding around on that old thing with him.”

 

“Why not?” Brixie shoots back. She turns, leading the group towards the footprint-marked trail. Over her shoulder, she adds, “Where Luke Skywalker goes, Mara Jade goes. And vice versa. Everyone knows that.”

 

Rey catches a quirk at the corner of the Captain’s mouth, though there’s a hint of something forlorn in his downcast face. “My uncle loves her for that—her fearlessness,” he says.

 

“They’re my role models,” Brixie croons. “For love, I mean. My parents, too. I’ll have that someday, I know it.” She sends a coquettish smile in _his_ direction, then directs her voice back towards Gozetta. “And If _I_ loved someone, nothing would ever separate us. I know I’d rather be flung from a snowskimmer with them than driven around safely by anything or anyone else.”

 

Gozetta rolls her eyes and continues marching, oblivious to the longing in Poe’s eyes when he looks over at her.

 

“Noble,” is the Captain’s staid reply.

 

The hike, Rey discovers as they embark upon it, is not a steep one. But it is long; the glacier seems to stretch up and away from the sea in a gradual ascent for kilometers before it finally meets the steep rockface wall of the mountainside.

 

For a few minutes, all of them— Poe, Gozetta, Brixie, the Captain, and Rey— are clumped together, tromping over snow and ice. But after a while, they begin to drift apart. Her sister and brother-in-law, tangled in a surprisingly flirtatious discussion of the koyo harvest yields, take the lead. Rey senses that the Captain, with his long muscled legs, could probably outpace them all, but he seems content to hike at Brixie’s side.

 

And why shouldn’t he be? This was meant to be a date, after all.

 

So Rey slows her own pace, letting herself fall a few meters behind. To cede space to them or herself, she couldn’t say.

 

They hike on.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey is freezing by the time they reach the first crevasse. They’ve been hiking for maybe a half an hour; it feels like longer, and like they haven’t made that much progress, until she looks back at the sweeping field of white ice that slopes down into the ocean behind them. There’ve been a few fissures along the way, but nothing so deep as this one.

 

And it is _deep_. Not wide, but terrifyingly deep. When she peers over the side— Gozetta grabbing onto the back of her coat with a hissed _“Careful!”_ — she notes how the light reaches down into the narrow space: flooding the first meter or so, then grasping more tenuously, then relinquishing its hold to the deep navy shadows.

 

She shudders, and when Gozetta yanks on her coat, hard, she’s more than willing to stumble back against her.

 

It’s not that the crevasse will be difficult to traverse. It won’t be. And yet— maybe set off by Brixie’s earlier ruminations on love, maybe just in a chivalrous mood— when Poe passes over it, he turns back to help Gozetta. He smiles at his wife so wolfishly that Rey is reminded of a different Poe, a Poe of many years ago who landed on Jakku, full of charm and swagger and purpose. His gloved hand is extended to her sister. Happily, Gozetta takes it and steps across.

 

Even once she’s safely on the other side, she does not let go.

 

Brixie advances next, and the Captain, his lips twitching, reaches his hand out for her to grasp. She accepts with a laugh and a dramatic dancer’s leap.

 

Positioned at the Captain’s back, Rey waits, mortified by how desperately she wants him to turn around and offer his aid, to repress a smug little smile for _her_ as he helps her over what amounts to not much more than a crack. _Please_ , she’s tempted to beg. _Just a scrap of kindness. I’ve survived my whole life on less._

 

But he doesn’t offer. Without fanfare, never once looking back at her, he joins Brixie. The group resumes hiking, leaving her to cross the crevasse on her own.

 

Which she can do, obviously. She’s perfectly capable of doing that. She is Rey of Jakku, she can walk across a crack in the ice without the help of some man, even if the man is Captain Solo.

 

But, she can't help but muse, as she does just that: wouldn’t it have been kind, if he’d offered?

 

 

. . .

 

 

Far ahead, Poe and Gozetta are still holding hands. Gozetta is laughing at something he’s said, and Poe looks… content. Shockingly content. It cheers Rey’s heart, to see them look so happy together.

 

She allows for the possibility that she is doing something right, when it comes to her sister. That she is succeeding there. Or at least making headway.

 

Brixie and the Captain are similarly preoccupied. Not wanting to interrupt or intercede— and unsure if she could even sustain a dialogue, half-frozen as she already is despite her layers— Rey hangs back. But the arctic wind shifts abruptly, blowing their words down to her.

 

“… and this friend of mine, O-Iris, she’s liked this co-worker of ours, Shiri, forever, right? And it’s obvious why—Shiri is a _beautiful_ Twi’lek. I mean… really beautiful. Big amber eyes and a really amazing, uh, figure,” Brixie is telling him.

 

Her voice goes breathless when she repeats, “ _Really_.”

 

She gesticulates as she speaks; her features are so expressive, gone a little dreamy, even in profile. His face is downturned as they tromp along; he is listening, glancing often at Brixie with those eyes that see too much.

 

“And with a brilliant mind for mechanics! _And_ she makes amazing Gruuvan shaal. _And_ she sings, and plays the siren whistle beautifully, something I didn’t even know was possible. She’s… she’s a total a catch, right?”

 

“Hm,” he says.

 

“And every day O-Iris finds a million excuses to walk past her cubicle, and stare at her in the break room during lunch, and all this other silly stuff. She just keeps hemming and hawing, without ever asking her out! It’s insane!” Brixie laughs, shaking her hooded head.

 

“I see.”

 

“So the other day I sat her down and I said, ‘O-Iris, this is ridiculous. You’re cute, she’s cute, you like her, I’m almost positive she likes you. So just… take a chance! Be firm, be decisive! Be bold!’”

 

“Good qualities,” he replies.

 

Her laugh jingles in the wind. “I agree. And then I told her, you know, she shouldn’t let _me_ be the reason she asks Shiri out. A person shouldn’t just let themselves be talked into anything. But if _I_ liked someone? Well, when I make up my mind, then… I.” Here she claps her gloved hands, a soft dull noise.

 

“Make.” _Clap._ “Up.” _Clap._ “My.” _Clap._ “Mind.”

 

Rey can’t make out if the Captain replies or not, although she does spy a dip of his head. Just a nod, then. In agreement, in support, in appreciation of Brixie and her made-up mind.

 

Something inside her cracks, like a fissure in the ice. Rey cannot _not_ cry, at that; even without being meant for her, it stings. She bites her chapped bottom lip, swiping at her tears with her mitten.

 

“You know what I mean?”

 

“I do. Your friend is lucky to have someone like you in her life. And you are lucky—to know your own mind, at your age.”

 

Brixie giggles, sounding delighted. “Is she? Am I?” She cants her head, and Rey can make out that her smile is teasing. She flutters her eyelashes theatrically until he huffs out an abrupt laugh too.

 

“Yes,” he replies, earnestly. “She is. You are.”

 

The wind changes directions for a few minutes, leaving Rey to her thoughts and her numb limbs, her cold-burnt face, her watering eyes. Her wool coat presses the cooled sweat on her neck and back against her body, sending a chill through her. She yearns for something like the balaclava that Gozetta— so far ahead of her now, a distant speck halfway up the glacier— has donned. She yearns to be warm again, to be sheltered.

 

Rey decides, then and there, that she doesn’t much care for glacier hiking.

 

Again, the wind shifts.

 

“You know, I like Gozetta… _fine…_ but… just between you and me?”

 

Brixie’s voice, lower now, is conspiratorial in tone. He bows his head. She glances cagily back at Rey, who gives a reassuring wave; she returns it, before turning again to the Captain and rounding her shoulders, as if to trap the words between them.

 

It doesn’t work; they still drift back to Rey. “I’m pretty sure my parents wish Rey had accepted Poe’s proposal,” she confides in him. “I know I certainly do.”

 

After a moment’s pause, the Captain clears his throat. “Poe… proposed to her? Marriage?”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“When?”

 

“Oh, _years_ back. Six or so? Whenever it was that he landed on Jakku, during the war. He told me once he was, and I quote, ‘in love with her the moment I laid eyes on her.’ Then, when she turned him down… that old friend of their family… hm, what was her name?”

 

“Mashra,” he bites out.

 

“That’s it! Supposedly she pointed Poe in Goz’s direction. They hit it off, and the rest is history.”

 

A few seconds of silent hiking follows. Brixie, seemingly struck by guilt about the aspersions she has cast, backtracks a bit: “I’m not saying my brother doesn’t love his wife. He does.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“It’s just—” she snorts, at herself maybe, or Gozetta or Poe, “ _I_ prefer the company of his wife’s sister. She’s so genuine—such a sincerely good person. Know what I mean?”

 

Softly, so softly Rey almost doesn’t hear it, he replies, “… I do.”

 

Those two words send a new chill through her, entirely unrelated to the cold. Lost in thought, she tunes out the rest of the conversation. Mindlessly, she advances, step by step, her quarterstaff and her ice cleats keeping her from falling prey to her distraction.

 

But how can she take notice of the world around her, at a time like this?

 

 _I do,_ he’d said. Again and again, she turns the words over in her mind, until she can barely even remember the sound of his deep voice uttering them. But her heart remembers; her heart is seared by them. There they remain, burned into the muscle like a brand.

 

And now, as that muscle gallops in her chest, she hears it in its thundering rhythm: _I do, I do, I do._

 

 

. . .

 

 

Jakku is a desert planet, but Rey had still known cold while living there. The nights, with their raging winds and uninterrupted darkness, could be terrible. In the mornings, she’d sometimes spot the bodies of beasts who’d been left exposed to the night, littered across the sands. Death by exhaustion, death by thirst, death by hypothermia and exposure.

 

Rey knows cold. But she has never known cold like the air that blasts across the Zirfan Glacier as the sun begins to sink and the dark clouds pack down lower in the sky.

 

She is freezing. Maybe to death.

 

This planet, this place— the towering columns of ice, the vast sheets of it that float across the dark rolling ocean, the snow-dusted fjords that cut into the distant shoreline, an entire landscape barely populated save for the lodge up on the mountain, and all of it such austere shades of white and blue and black— it is undeniably beautiful. And severe in a way that _does_ remind her of Jakku. She can appreciate that.

 

But she can’t feel her feet, or her legs. For almost an hour now, she’s been shaking so hard her teeth rattle; snot streams from her nostrils, tears from her eyes. Both are absorbed by her mittens, which have become disgusting.

 

“I’m fine,” she’s been telling herself, under her breath. “This is fine.”

 

She’s not. But she’s determined to get through this, on her own. This was meant to be a fun date; everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves. Rey _can_ get through this. She _will_ get through this. And besides, she has those two words to warm her— in spirit, if not in flesh.

 

This is all she’s thinking about, fixated on survival and a fake smile and _I do_ , until Luke and Mara whiz up the slope past them in their snowskimmer. The Captain waves at them as they pass, flagging them down. The skimmer slows then turns back, coming to a hovering halt alongside him and Brixie.

 

As Rey approaches, she sees him incline his head towards his uncle. The two of them speak, a rapid, almost perfunctory-looking exchange, before he straightens and nods, apparently satisfied.

 

“Rey!” Mara cries, when Rey shambles up beside the transport. “You look half-frozen! Your lips have gone completely blue.”

 

“No,” she gasps. “I’m f-f-fine, really…”

 

“I think you should get in the skimmer with us,” Luke tells her.

 

She glances at Brixie and the Captain, who nod in agreement. In the distance, she can see that Poe and Gozetta have paused their ascent to turn and watch the proceedings.

 

Mara smiles at her. “You’re tiny, you’ll fit next to me! Come on, it's nice and warm in here.”

 

But she is Rey of Jakku. She can do this climb. If anyone in the galaxy can climb this glacier, it is her.

 

“No, I—”

 

Mara, blithely ignoring her objections, has already squeezed over on the skimmer’s bench seat, making room for her.

 

“I’m—” she tries again.

 

And then there is a big hand clasping hers. She turns, alarmed, and finds her face level with the coat-covered chest of Captain Solo. Barely daring to breathe, she lets her gaze drift up, until she meets his sharp eyes. It’s obvious that he has missed nothing, that he has noticed her distress.

 

“Your lips _are_ blue,” he says, not unkindly. He steps forward, herding her closer to the skimmer. “And you’re pale as death. Get in.”

 

Before she can protest, his arm wraps around her, like a steel bar supporting and gingerly lifting her up into the skimmer. For a moment, all the world is chaos. He is touching her, they’re _touching_ , her hand clutches his and his arm is around her waist and how _easily_ he lifts her up, takes her weight… then she is settled on the seat beside Mara. Gently, he pulls his hands free of her, then takes a step back.

 

There is a split second wherein their eyes lock again; in his gaze she finds not anger, not resentment, not the empty coldness of indifference, but feeling. Compassion. Worry.

 

Mara pats her back then loops an arm through hers to bring her closer. Rey swallows, and the Captain does too; she spies his throat bob. Averting his gaze, he works his jaw, just like she remembers.

 

She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

 

“We’ll be up at the lodge with you in no time!” Brixie consoles her. From afar, Gozetta gives a glum wave, Poe a joking salute.

 

 _He_ will not look at her.

 

The skimmer’s engine revs, Luke shifts the gears, and away they go.

 

 

. . .

 

 

So.

 

So, then.

 

Captain Solo may not have forgiven her for everything that happened on Jakku eight years ago, but there is no denying this: he is still a person capable of empathy, of understanding. He might not want to help her over a crevasse, but he has not hardened his heart so completely against her that he would let her suffer in the cold. He doesn’t want her dead by frostbite.

 

Rey doesn’t know what to make of that.

 

He cares about her. It might be an insubstantial amount of feeling, but he _does_ care.

 

Luke takes them out over the water, still joy-riding. She peers at the glacier’s edge as they zoom along. Glimpses of smooth turquoise ice are revealed when the waves roll away from its edges; shards of shattered ice rise up when the waves push back.

 

This glacier is ice. Only ice. Just water locked in time and cold. And yet it is moving forward, creeping toward the sea, changing; it is a thing alive.

 

Could Rey dare to dream of such a fate? Could she find her way forward, could she break free from stasis?

 

Could she be brought to the sea, at long last?

 

Could she be the one to bring herself there?

 

“They’re really hitting it off, aren’t they?” Luke muses. He glances over at Mara and Rey.

 

“Hm?” Rey asks.

 

He grins. “Brixie and Ben.”

 

“Oh.” If only she hadn’t replied; she could’ve pretended that she hadn’t heard him. “I… I think so.”

 

Mara squints, staring forward through the transparisteel windshield. “She’s lovely,” she says, in the bland sort of tone people sometimes use when they don’t want to offend anyone. “A clever, nice, pretty young woman.”

 

Rey nods. “Yes.”

 

Her shivering has not abated; the cold is so deep in her bones that not even the heated air blowing from the vents can reach it. And maybe something else makes her shiver too: Mara isn’t wrong, Brixie _is_ all those things. Clever, nice, and pretty. She scrunches her nose, trying to push away her envy, just as the Jedi swings a bundled arm around her shoulders to bring her in closer.

 

“If he’d fallen for her during the war,” Luke says, “they probably would’ve been like you and me, Mara.” He smirks, not looking away from the horizon. “Or Shara and Kes.”

 

She should not ask, she should not encourage Luke. If she keeps her mouth shut, keeps her head turned and her eyes on glacier’s edge, this conversation won’t continue. Or it can continue without her, and she can return to her reverie.

 

But now she’s curious. So: “How’s that?”

 

“Oh, you know. Get together quick, get married quick—if that’s something that matters to you—make it official before you get sent back out into battle. Grab whatever life you can, in whatever free time you have. Just in case.”

 

Mara scoffs. “I knew who you were long before you ever met me, Luke Skywalker, and don’t you forget it. I came into this marriage with my eyes wide open, thank you very much—nothing rushed about it.”

 

“Thank the stars for that,” he says, sounding half amused, half sincere.

 

Mara nods. “And of course, we had the Force.” Her green eyes slide towards Rey, a hint of something sly in her curved lips. “I’m not saying a Jedi should abuse their abilities, or use them as a shortcut to get to know someone—that is, intimately, but…”

 

Grinning, Luke affirms: “It happens.” One grizzled eyebrow pops up. “And it certainly helps.”

 

“ _Luke!_ ” Mara’s voice is all playful warning, a bit of teasing. He smiles, reaching for her gloved hand and bringing it to his lips.

 

“I’d heard about you too, Mara Jade. You were a legend long before I ever set eyes on you.”

 

Mara nods again, pleased. “Damn right I was.” She frowns down at the controls for a beat, then over at Luke. “Now,” she directs, “scoot over and let me navigate—you’re definitely going to overturn us if you keep on like this.”

 

“Whatever you say, Mara Jade,” he drawls, completely at ease. When she pushes herself up onto his lap, he shifts, sliding towards Rey so as to allow her to drop behind the controls of the skimmer.

 

 _That could’ve been us,_ Rey thinks, watching them with a pang of the old familiar sorrow.

 

Does _he_ ever think that, when he sees people in love? People who are happy? People who have grown together, into something more than the sum of their parts? He is not insensate to her pain. Has he been insensate to his? Has she? _What are you feeling, Ben?_

 

Rey thinks again of the bell that cannot be unrung. Eight years ago, it was struck. At times, its tolling has grown faint, at times louder, but it has never ceased. Not really. Even now, she can hear its reverberations on the biting Rhinnalian winds, just as she could on Jakku.

 

She curls her fingers into a fist inside her mitten, bites the inside of her cheek. When Luke bumps her shoulder, a worried crease puckering his brow, she gives him a wan smile, the best she can do.

 

_Love like this could’ve been ours._

 

_What are you thinking, Ben? Can you hear the bell? Does it still ring for you, too?_

 

 

. . .

 

 

Bzzt. Bzzt.

 

After hitting the buzzer beside the apartment door in the diplomatic residency complex a second time, Rey rocks back on her heels, forced to wait. She taps one foot softly on the welcome mat, trying not to think about the fact that _he_ is probably living somewhere nearby.

 

She hasn’t heard much about him from the Damerons in the days that have passed since their Rhinnal outing, except an offhand comment about some planned visit with his senator friend on Hosnian Prime. _What was his name?_

 

 _Finn_ , she recalls, just as the door whooshes open.

 

“So,” exclaims Mashra, “you’ve been busy, from what I hear!”

 

“Uh—”

 

“Well, come on in, child, no need to stand outside all day!” Mashra is grinning, the edges of her snout upturned. “I am so _glad_ you have come to see me, I’ve missed you something awful. Caf?”

 

“Yes, please,” she murmurs, seating herself in the simple but comfortable living room. As she listens to Mashra pouring the caf in the kitchen, she watches the Abednedo’s broad back through a gap in the wall that divides the rooms. After a moment, she calls out, “Er, what have you heard, exactly?”

 

“Oh, you know.” Mugs in hand, Mashra pass into the living room. She offers one to Rey, who takes a sip as she goes on, “That you’ve been welcomed into the Dameron family social circle—you were even seen at the Lake Sah’ot Jatz Club with them and Senator Organa and… him.”

 

A blush heats her cheeks, and a murmured, “Yes,” is all she can muster.

 

“Hmph.”

 

“This is… a very nice place,” she demurs, looking around. The furniture is good quality, the home seems fully equipped with the kind of conveniences she’s becoming accustomed to in the Damerons’ bungalow. “How’s your cousin?”

 

“Some days are better than others for Brasmon,” Mashra admits. “The prosthesis vexes him. But he’s done very well for himself.”

 

“Right.” She nods. “Please give him my congratulations, by the way.”

 

Mashra’s smile widens. “Ah, you saw then? On the HoloNet, probably. Senator Brasmon Kee of Abednedo has a nice ring to it, I think.”

 

“Sure,” she says, listlessly. Rey is finding it hard to focus. Her mind wanders: where exactly might Senator Organa’s apartment be in the complex? And has _he_ already left, or is he still inside it? Is it in this building? One nearby? Above her? Below?

 

Have he and Mashra met, in passing? She remembers how he spit out the name while talking with Brixie on Rhinnal. The idea that he resents Mashra— for what? For what happened with them?— has gnawed at her for days.

 

She hopes they haven’t met; she can’t imagine it going well.

 

Inattentively, she takes a sip of her caf, unsurprised to find it bitter and scalding— just how Mashra prefers it. She smiles at the memory of many cups of caf drunk together, back in the bunker on Jakku. A glance at the Abednedo’s own mug reveals it is already half-drank. Her smiles fades as she remembers another shared cup— not of caf, but tea.

 

A holoprojector, a news bulletin, a devastating epiphany.

 

An afternoon spent crying out her anguish on the soft bunker floor. A red sunset. Stagnant air.

 

That look in his eyes. Confusion and then disgust and then heartbreak, and then… acceptance. Then nothing.

 

So much nothing.

 

“… setting up his office on Hosnian Prime, which he prefers to Coruscant,” she catches, starting at the realization that Mashra has continued speaking while she’s been ruminating. “Although he’ll commute back and forth, depending on where the next session is held. There’s talk they might convene on Hevurion for a cycle or two.”

 

“That’s… very exciting.” Rey hopes that’s a polite response.

 

“Yes, that’ll be in about two weeks. First he’s gone to Abednedo, to give some forum-style discussions with his constituents.”

 

“Ah. I… see.”

 

Mashra nods, as if it’s all very simple and clearcut. And perhaps it would be, had Rey been paying attention. “So that’s where I’ll be,” she concludes.

 

“Ah—wait, sorry? What?”

 

“Are you alright, Rey?” Her wide brow crinkles in bafflement. “You seem very distracted today.”

 

“Yes, I’m—yes,” she manages. “Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

 

“Is it your sister’s home? Must be strange, staying with her and her children. Gozetta, a mother! Hmph.” Mashra pauses long enough to let out a weary sigh. “You know, I really thought she would’ve come to see me… her _and_ Poe. After all I did for them—”

 

Rey cuts across her. “Gozetta sends her love. She’s just—well, you know how her health is.”

 

“Problems again?”

 

Lips pressed together, she simply hums an affirmation.

 

“Perhaps I should go visit,” Mashra says, as much to herself as to Rey.

 

“I’m—sure once she’s feeling better she’ll be happy to come see you on… Hevurion, did you say?”

 

That’s a lie. Rey knows it’s a lie, knows that Gozetta will never visit, knows that her sister considers herself above Mashra— too good to be seen in the presence of a Jakku scavenger, only tolerating the indignity of being seen with Rey around Chandrila because they are family. But she has to say _something_.

 

“No, I’m going straight to Hosnian Prime,” Mashra corrects, with a frown. “Weren’t you listening?” She tilts her head, perplexed. “But I just told you! I’ll be Brasmon’s senatorial assistant.”

 

“Ah." She has no idea what requirements there are to be a senatorial assistant, but she wonders if Mashra— who, to her knowledge, has spent most of her life like Rey, a salvager on Jakku— really possesses the skills. Still, she holds her tongue, saying only, “Double congratulations, in that case.”

 

“Thank you,” the Abednedo murmurs. “I do feel I’ve landed on my feet—I’ve done pretty well for myself.”

 

“Oh. Yes. I—”

 

“Anyway,” Mashra interrupts. From the glint in her eyes, Rey suspects that there’s something she’s far more interested in talking about, and sure enough, her next words are: “Captain Solo?”

 

How could she know? Is it obvious that he has consumed her thoughts and dreams for the past several weeks? That the image of him— perpetually tense these days, composed and self-assured but so tense, poised like a rancor in the moments before it strikes, with his silver-streaked hair and the tired creases around his eyes, with his clipped, enigmatic answers to every question, with those words, those blistering words, _I do_ , having re-rung the bell— that it is there every time she closes her eyes, haunting her? Can Mashra sense that?

 

No. She couldn’t. Mashra isn’t sensitive to the Force, she’s just known Rey since she was a small child. She just knows her too well.

 

Rey sighs. “Yes?” she prompts, not willing to give away anything she doesn’t have to.

 

“You’ve been seen with him. Together with the Damerons and the Skywalkers.”

 

“Yes,” she confirms, then hastens to sip at her coffee, offering no more details.

 

Mashra shakes her head, her disapproval evident. “Oh, _Rey_. Is that a good idea? I hope you’re being careful.”

 

Rey blinks in shock. “What—what do you mean?”

 

“I mean…” Mashra falters for only a moment, before forging on, “you two have a past, don’t you? I can see it, Rey—you’re distracted, you have a… glow about you. Just as you did back then. And, well, I don’t want to see you hurt again. _Be reasonable._ All that is behind you now—shouldn’t you keep it that way?”

 

It’s difficult for Rey to parse the immediate and intense emotion provoked by those words. _Be reasonable,_ she recalls. It's not the first time she's received that counsel. Mashra is someone to whom she has always felt gratitude. The Abednedo kept her alive on Jakku, helped her when times were lean and life veered a little too close to that precipice, beyond which lies only death. And she gave her hope, didn’t she?

 

 _Hope that smothered you_ , something inside her snarls. _Hope that buried you, that froze you in your tracks and kept you standing there—a statue, eroded by the elements, stone within and stone without. Hope that chained you to a family that does not love you._

 

She flinches; if Mashra notices, she says nothing. “I…” she tries, then flounders.

 

 _He loved you,_ she thinks. _That love was_ real _and it was yours._

 

She could scream, for all the rage she suddenly feels. It fills her, scorching her from the inside out. _Where is this coming from?_ she wonders. Why now, after all these years?

 

Is it because of him— because he spoke those two words, and breathed fiery hope back into her?

 

Rey is sorely tempted to throw the caf to the floor, to strike at Mashra. She hasn’t brought her quarterstaff, but she still has her fists. She wants to scream and gnash her teeth and rave at her supposed guardian, who should have had her best interests at heart.

 

 _You knew Ergel,_ she wants to say. _You knew who he was—what he was. And you let me turn away from love… for him. For them._

 

_You led me astray._

 

But it would change nothing. Her regret, her sorrow, her rage, it’s all the same; it cannot turn back the chrono, it cannot allow her another chance to make different choices. There is no amending the past. There is no killing it.

 

A wave of exhaustion washes over her, as though she has climbed the Zirfan Glacier all over again.

 

Depleted, heart racing, she pulls in a long breath through her nose, then lets it out slowly.

 

“Let’s talk about something else,” she says at last, through clenched teeth. “I don’t want… to discuss… this. With you.”

 

Mashra looks hurt by that, large dark eyes blinking furiously. She opens her snout, then closes it, then does the same twice more. Finally, she composes herself, nods, and in a monotone voice, begins to detail the responsibilities of a senator’s assistant.

 

Rey’s hand, resting in her lap, is balled into a fist. Even as Mashra speaks, even as the equilibrium in the room is restored and both females find their footing once more, returning to something civil if slightly less amicable than before… her nails dig sharp painful purple-white crescents into the flesh her palm.

 

They stay that way long after she’s left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh? Some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa edition: [Brasmon Kee](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Brasmon_Kee), inspiration for the names [O-Iris](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/O-Iris) and [Shiri](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Twi%27leki/Legends)
> 
> Who were the [Malkite Poisoners](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Malkite_Poisoners)?
> 
> Where is [Hevurion](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hevurion), [Pressy's Tumble](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pressy%27s_Tumble), [Ovanis](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ovanis), [Takodana](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Takodana), [D'Qar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/D%27Qar), [Akiva](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Akiva), [the Inamorata](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Inamorata), [Vulpinus Nebula](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vulpinus_Nebula), [Hapes](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hapes_Consortium/Legends), [Rhinnal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rhinnal) [the [Sennes Mountains](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sennes_Mountains) and [Zirfan glacier](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Zirfan_glacier)]? [Lake Sah'ot](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lake_Sah%27ot)? [Batuu](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Batuu)? [Abednedo](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Abednedo)?
> 
> [An aside: after I wrote this, I found a [map](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rhinnal?file=Farorbitringaliee0.jpg) which shows that it takes, like, MANY days to get from Chandrila to Rhinnal. So let's just say that… hyperdrive technology has come a long way. 🤷♀️😂]
> 
> What is [jatz](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jatz)? [Siren whistle](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_whistle)?
> 
> What are [clari-crystalline](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Clari-crystalline) and [fire rubies](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_ruby)?
> 
> I'd like a [Bespin Breeze](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bespin_Breeze), please. But I'll pass on [skor-fin](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Skor-fin) cured in [jun-lime](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jun-lime) juice. Probably the [scalefish fillets](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Scalefish_fillets) and [gruuvan shaal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gruuvan_shaal) too. [P.S. Yes I did put a fancy seafood restaurant in the middle of a freshwater inland lake. Rich people, amirite?]
> 
> [Fireheads](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Firehead): adorable or horrifying?
> 
> What are [gaberwool](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gaberwool) and [shimmersilk](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shimmersilk)?
> 
> Choose your transport: [seaskimmer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Seaskimmer_\(watercraft\)), [snowskimmer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Snow_skimmer), [SSD](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Super_Star_Destroyer), or heavy cruiser like the [_Ravenous_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ravenous)?
> 
> What's up with [First Order Stormtroopers](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Stormtrooper_\(First_Order\))?
> 
> What's a [repulsorlift](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Repulsorlift) and a [tractor beam](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tractor_beam)?
> 
> What's the [Galactic Concordance](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Concordance)?
> 
> Would you attend the [University of Coruscant](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/University_of_Coruscant)?
> 
> [Glaciers!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidewater_glacier_cycle) [They're cool.]
> 
> Some dress inspo, if you want: [the emerald gown](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7c/e1/d8/7ce1d8f65766a7b44149f4bb9e1f3a8f.jpg) and [the silver shimmersilk gown](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e1/e8/84/e1e884b78941a49301b5d2e54c5d2e49--costume-renaissance-renaissance-clothing.jpg). [Minus the headpiece and the bling.]
> 
> Okay, I think that's all from me for this chapter. Thank you for reading! ❤


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain [Solo] looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance, a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, ‘That man is struck with you, and even I, at this moment, see something like [Rey of Jakku] again.’” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to [Trixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen) who generously gave this chapter a consistency-checking alpha read, my amazing beta-reader [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado), who continues to corrall my subject/verb agreement and just generally be the nicest, and [Chel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinies/pseuds/destinies), who is not only endless supportive but also my go-to expert on all things Hux-related! 💕

**42 ABY.**

 

A week passes, and Rey’s anger returns to a low simmer, quieted but not extinguished.

 

(It is not the actions of the Dameron family nor her sister that rankle her, so when she’d returned to the bungalow that afternoon after visiting Mashra, she’d taken several deep, bracing breaths and fixed a wan smile on her face before entering. It has remained there ever since.)

 

The absence of Captain Solo at the Great House has been accompanied with a decline in dinner parties. She is of two minds about that development: there is some relief, she has discovered, in not seeing him so often— not being reminded so frequently of their fraught history— and yet…

 

She misses him all over again. But this time it's not her young love, the rash son of a smuggler— twenty-nine and full of fear— whom she misses. Now it is the seasoned veteran, a quiet, serious man who chooses his words carefully, who visibly wears the weight of his thirty-seven years, that she longs to see.

 

With each day he is gone, she is given more space to reflect on all that has passed, and finds herself wishing more and more ardently that they could begin again. That they could be friends, if nothing else. She wants to speak to him as she once did, without reserve. Wants him to speak to her, in that lovely deep rumble of his. Wants to know where he has been, what he has seen, what he is thinking.

 

And maybe all this wanting might’ve threatened to drown her once, like her tears that day she returned to the _Ravager_ , but two months on from being thrown back into his path, Rey has become skilled at treading water in her desires. She still wants. Desperately, she wants. But the wanting has become familiar, and Rey has inured herself to it; she can now manage some rational contemplation of all that has passed between them on Chandrila.

 

Captain Solo has shown a capacity for mercy, for kindness, for wisdom, for generosity. Resentful as he may be of her, Rey’s thoughts return time and time again to his arm around her, holding her tightly as he lifted her into the snowskimmer.

 

If she got nothing else from that Rhinnal expedition, she has at least learned this: he is not so hard-hearted towards her, after all.

 

She thinks frequently of the ways he has changed, the weariness that she has spied in his movements, that she has heard in his tone. He has not exhibited a shred of that barely-stifled fear that she remembers so well. Instead, he seems to have fully grown into himself, in confidence and competence.

 

Confident, and competent, and yet still _alone_. Is that strange? She worries at this idea incessantly. And moreover: could there be room in his life for her? Could they bridge the chasm between themselves, could they build over their history?

 

Ultimately, she has realized, her longing to see him, to truly know him again, is much stronger than any small relief at _not_ seeing him.

 

Brixie on the other hand, from all outward appearances, has not suffered in the wake of his departure to Hosnian Prime. Maybe this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to Rey, considering Brixie’s nature. From Rey’s observations, Brixie has carried on with her life without concern or dismay. She goes to work, she tends her bees, she spends time with her coworkers and time with her family. She helps Poe with the maintenance of the koyo wine production, she comes over to play with her nephews. She laughs and rambles and smiles as winningly as she ever has.

 

She still talks of him often in an admiring, breathless tone though, and mentions communications with him by holo. And she  _seems_ no worse for the wear.

 

 _But then,_ Rey has mused repeatedly in the past week, _don’t we all have hidden depths?_

 

Hasn’t she hidden so much of her own pain from those whom she purports to love? Who can know, besides Brixie, if the younger woman has done the same?

 

As for Rey, she has fallen into her own daily routine. Each morning she wakes overheated and swamped with arousal by dreams she cannot remember. She quietly takes care of that herself in her sleeper before rising and joining her sister and brother-in-law for breakfast. Then she excuses herself for a long, long walk along the beach. The cold season has truly settled upon the seaside, Hanna City and the surrounding forests now, and the days are raw and frigid, often rainy. Yet she walks anyway, every day, without fail. Though the chill seeps through her layers and her cheeks burn from the sea air, there’s still something about this part of the routine that she’s come to crave.

 

Maybe it’s that Chandrila’s winds do not leave her feeling eroded, but invigorated.

 

Maybe it’s just a return to what she knows best: solitude.

 

Maybe it’s that there is so much to think about. In regards to her past, in regards to her future, in regards to _him_.

 

On some mornings, her silent ministrations having failed to dampen the aching twinge in her core, she strips down and throws herself into the frigid waves until she is cool and numb and her mind is empty.

 

On others, she allows the fever to overtake her. She allows herself to dream, to hope. To plan even, in some small measure.

 

When she returns to the bungalow, she spends time with Gozetta, her nephews, Brixie, Poe. The remainder of the days pass uneventfully. Sometimes they all eat at the Great House, mostly they don’t. Rey usually retires early, touching herself again before she drifts off to sleep.

 

She cannot be sure what will come next, what will interrupt this lulling rhythm. She has only the unshakable certainty that something is coming.

 

And the tentative hope that she and the Captain have not seen the last of each other.

 

 

. . .

 

 

It is on one such blustery morning, a week and a day after the Captain has left, that Rey returns to the bungalow to find Gozetta departed with the boys to Hanna City, and Poe seated at the dining table of the main room, where he is speaking with a stranger.

 

“Nah, the harvest is all finished now,” Poe is saying when Rey emerges from the hallway, hair still wet from the sea and cheeks flushed from exercise and cold. He gives an absent wave to her, which she returns as she heads towards the caf maker. On the table, a holoprojector is displaying a flickering blue-tinted face.

 

Features can be a little difficult to make out in a hologram, but as far as she can tell, the figure on the other end of the transmission is a handsome man with a rich brown complexion, eyes that crinkle with amusement, and dark hair, markedly less silver-streaked than Poe’s and the Captain’s.

 

“So what’re you doing with your time then, huh?” he teases, chuckling.

 

Poe smirks. “Family man.”

 

“You and that family of yours should come see me on Batuu,” says the hologram. “I’ll be here for another week or so before I head back to Hosnian Prime.”

 

“Solo come all the way out there with you?”

 

A distorted scoff. “Yeah, but—just between you and me—he’s such a mope these days. Rose is a little bit better, but she’s still struggling too. Has been, since—y’know. Paige. Us. Everything. Anyway, I could use some help cheering the two of them up.”

 

“Well…”

 

Poe’s eyes slide over to Rey. Mug clutched tightly in her hands, she stands frozen in carbonite, having been stilled by the mention of _him_. And his… mopiness.

 

What does _that_ mean? What could be bothering him?

 

She’s been caught eavesdropping, even if Poe _is_ conducting this conversation out in the common room of the bungalow. His smile is not unkind, but bemused; he’s clearly puzzled as to why she’s listening. Her face warm with what she’s sure is a visible blush, she offers an apologetic shrug and pivots on her heel, then hightails it out of the room.

 

“Let me think about it,” she hears him concede, as the guest bedroom door hisses closed behind her.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“So what d'ya say?” prompts Poe, that evening. The two families are gathered around the Great House dining table, absent any guests. The beeswax candles in its center flicker, burned low, and the plates have long since been cleared away. Little Poe and Weir are fast asleep on a sofa in another room; their holotoon’s cheery jingle drifts across the house on a draft.

 

“We can afford to spare you for a week or two,” Kes says generously. “You worked hard this harvest—you deserve the vacation.”

 

“You said Ben is out there with him, right?”

 

There’s an excited glint in Brixie’s eyes as she asks; one dark brow is quirked up high. At Poe’s nod, she taps her chin, and declares with faux-seriousness, “You know… I’m pretty sure I have some unused vacation days from Chandriltech. And I _think_ I have to use them before the end of the year, or they go to waste.”

 

“Well,” laughs Shara, “Sounds like all my kids are going on vacation.”

 

“And me?”

 

Gozetta’s mouth is set in a thin, tight line. She’s glaring at her husband, her face a menacing storm cloud.

 

“Shall I just stay home and sit around with _our_ children then, while you gallivant across the galaxy with your friends?”

 

“I’ll be with you,” Rey reminds her, under her breath.

 

“That’s not the point!” she snaps. “Why should Poe get to have all the fun! You think what I do isn’t work? You think I’m lazy, is that it?”

 

“You haven’t been to the Outer Rim in a long time,” he argues, temper flaring to meet hers. “You haven’t seen what it’s like out there! If you think I’m taking my sons, who are only five and three, might I remind you—”

 

Gozetta’s lips curl back in anger. “Don’t _you_ tell _me_ how old they are! Like I didn’t carry them for nine months, like it hasn’t been _me_ who—”

 

“I have an idea,” Shara cuts in, hands raised in a conciliatory gesture. “The boys can stay here with Kes and I for a couple weeks, and all the young people can go have a nice adventure. How’s that?” She turns to Rey, eyes wide and beseeching. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you Rey? See a little more of the galaxy?”

 

Gozetta scoffs. After a few seconds’ worth of anxious glancing between her and Poe, Rey looks to the elder Damerons, who nod at her encouragingly.

 

“That’s—an excellent plan, I think.” She forces a weak smile. Two weeks spent in his presence? Who can say what might happen? Will he be cold to her, as he has been in the past, or will his thaw continue? A glimpse of Brixie’s face reveals what _she_ is hoping will happen; she practically vibrates with excitement.

 

Rey feels a pang of guilt at that.

 

She should leave well enough alone, shouldn’t she? She had her chance. If it’s Brixie the Captain wants, then it’s Brixie he should be with. Rey renews her resolve then and there not to get in their way, especially on this trip, should that be the case.

 

“I’d love to see—uh, Batuu,” she says at last. “What do you think, Goz?”

 

“Yes,” is all that Gozetta deigns to say.

 

Brixie gives a roll of her eyes so subtle that Rey almost misses it.

 

“Guess _that’s_ settled,” she drawls.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey thinks that perhaps the argument will set back her machinations to improve her sister’s marriage. She does her best to set things right on the walk back from the Great House, murmuring an appeal to Poe to see Gozetta’s point of view, to appreciate the steps she has made to improve her situation, and herself.

 

All she gets from him in response is a series of unimpressed grunts.

 

But later that night, while performing her nightly ablutions in the refresher, she hears them talking in low, sober voices, out in the main room.

 

And by the next morning they both seem, to Rey, to be in the best spirits she’s seen them in since she’s arrived.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The journey to Batuu, even using the Hydian Way Hyperlane— one of the fastest in the galaxy— still takes them about four standard galactic days. Poe, Gozetta, Brixie, and Rey all find their own ways to pass the time while cooped up aboard the Dameron family’s creaky old YZ-775 light freighter, _Pathfinder_. Poe does the majority of the actual flying and navigating, although Brixie and Rey spot him intermittently. Much of Rey’s remaining time is spent sniffing out components on the ship that could use tweaking or repairs, and happily whiling away the hours administering those tweaks and repairs.

 

Perhaps the only notable detail of their time is the unexpected rapport that develops between Gozetta and Brixie.

 

Sabacc.

 

It starts with a game of sabacc.

 

Rey is in the lower-level cargo hold within hours of their leaving Chandrila, already tinkering with a malfunctioning illuminator bar. Down here, the sweet smell of past koyo fruit shipments still hangs heavy in the recycled air. She’s nestled comfortably in a large heap of unused cargo netting at the bottom of a ladder that leads up to the crew quarters, where her sister and sister-in-law are seated at the small booth and table that serves as ship lounge. Their voices boom down through the hatch, and without really meaning to, she listens as she works.

 

“You brat, you cheated!” shouts Brixie, laughing, when Gozetta reveals her third winning hand in a row.

 

“I am certainly _not_ a brat,” Gozetta huffs; this non-denial is followed by the sound of her scraping her winnings across the table.

 

Brixie snorts. “You certainly _are_ , Gozetta of Jakku.”

 

“Oh yeah? Well… it takes one to know one!”

 

“Maybe so, but I’m not actually hearing a defense in there. You did cheat, didn’t you?”

 

There’s a moment of indignant sputtering, before Gozetta snaps, “Well, what if I did? Is it _my_ fault you’re too poor a sabacc player to have caught it?”

 

“My sister taught me to play, not to cheat or catch cheaters!”

 

“Well, mine taught me all three. What of it?”

 

A weighted pause. Finally, her tone calculating yet playful, Brixie says, “Okay, fair enough. It’s not your fault I didn’t catch you. But it _is_ your fault you haven’t taught me your tricks before now.”

 

“Before now, hm? You think I’m just going to show you? Verla would kill me if she found out!”

 

“Oh, c’mon,” Brixie wheedles, “Us babies of the family haveta stick together, Goz. Imagine it: the next time I play a hand against Poe, he makes that dumb smirk when he inevitably pulls together a Pure Sabbac. Then, out of nowhere, I bust out an Idiot’s Array. Just _think_ of the look on his face!”

 

Another pause. This one feels, to Rey, more contemplative.

 

“…One. I’ll show you _one_ trick.”

 

Rey smiles to herself.

 

And that’s how it goes: any spare moment when Brixie isn’t flying and Gozetta isn’t napping or studying, they’re glued to that table, playing hand after hand of sabacc. Even Rey gets sucked in, joining for a hand here or there— although she’s not very good at the game, and she never wins.

 

Mostly, she just enjoys how the tone of their bickering has shifted from adversarial to conspiratorial. She enjoys the company, the good-natured teasing that passes between the three women. For the first time in ages, Rey experiences something like camaraderie.

 

She’d nearly forgotten how dearly she loves it, the feeling of belonging.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They’ve almost reached Batuu when she awakens with a start in the pod-like berth of her private cabin, drenched in sweat and shaky from the faint wisp of a dream that taunts her as it dissipates.

 

She rolls over, looking out the bedside viewport at the blur of passing blue-white stars and fathomless black space. Closing her eyes, she tries to snatch at that wisp.

 

There was a tree. A big one, with not a single leaf on its twisting branches. And _he_ was there, underneath it, waiting for her. Their bodies, bare, were pressed so closely together; their minds, touching, were communing so deeply it was as though they were one.

 

He was inside her. Or was she inside him? There was no place where she ended and he began, only a feeling of melting into one another, only molten need and love flowing between them, amplified with each revolution, until it eclipsed everything else.

 

Until all the suns in all the systems were blotted out, and he and her were all that remained.

 

Rey sighs.

 

It was so _real_. It’s disappearing now, but it felt realer than any dream. It felt like he was there with her. His true self, and hers too.

 

Another inhale, another exhale, and it’s gone completely.

 

Well, not _completely_. She presses her thighs together, trying to alleviate that old familiar twinge in her core, but it’s too late; she’s already barreling towards full-blown arousal. Rey recalls how most mornings since this has started happening, she’s taken care of it herself, and followed up her ministrations with her long walk on the beach, sometimes even taking a dive into the frigid wintry sea.

 

There’s no sea now, though, and she cannot be sure that the walls of her cabin are soundproof.

 

So it is with the knuckles of one fist shoved between her teeth that she slides her free hand under her bedding and leggings, over the soft skin of her belly, slightly less concave than it was when she left Jakku, and past the wiry hair of her mons, opening herself up. She’s slick there, and warm, and so sensitive that she shudders on contact.

 

Rey is no longer a naive nineteen year-old just learning the terrain of her body. She has, in the years that have passed since she began exploring this part of herself, learned the correct names for her clitoris, her labia, her vulva, and she has learned exactly how to touch each. She knows the full spectrum of orgasms of which she’s capable— rushed and perfunctory, slow and exorbitant— and knows what she needs to achieve them.

 

Right now she’s going for efficiency.

 

(The first time she touched herself after he left, she couldn’t bear the thought of him. Nor the time after. Not for a long time.

 

But eventually, without consciously allowing herself to or intending to, and only under the cover of night, lying in her hammock, she _did_ think of him. She conjured up the way he smelled, how he’d looked at her, how it had felt when his mouth was on her. And hers on him. That low, desperate sound she’d torn from him when she’d taken him down to the root, and swallowed his spend. How his big hands had held her, made her feel precious, made her feel wanted.

 

She thought about him so much in those heated moments that the memories became faded and threadbare, like a garment that has been washed a thousand times or more. And in the sticky aftermath of each orgasm, she would promise herself: never again.

 

Always the same promise. Always to be broken, the next time she was in need of relief or some small measure of pleasure or even just sleep.)

 

Still, she muses, closing her eyes, rubbing a circle around her clit, tracing a path down through her folds then around them…

 

Threadbare is better than nothing. Most of her existence is threadbare these days.

 

Threadbare suffices.

 

 

. . .

 

 

It’s a rainy afternoon that they dip down into when they enter Batuu’s atmosphere, not far from the Black Spire Outpost. Strapped into a cockpit chair behind the pilots, it’s hard to see much: a streaky, silvery veil of rain partially obscures the world beyond the viewport. It hammers furiously on the freighter hull, too, drowning out the thready pounding of her heartbeat in her ears.

 

But even in the mire, Rey understands at once how the settlement got its name.

 

Petrified trees rise up from the earth like jagged spurs of dark fossilized bone, as if the surface of Batuu is the back of some long-deceased quilled beast. As they approach the Outpost, she can see that in the shadows and safety of a particularly thick cluster of these osseous spires, muddy dome-topped buildings have been constructed. Everything, manmade and organic, is overgrown with lush green vines, and the surrounding land itself is a riotous eruption of verdant forest and wildflower blooms. The _Pathfinder_ swoops over it all, Poe and Brixie carefully maintaining an altitude just above the spires’ sharply pointed peaks.

 

A large patchwork of building tops connected by swathes of canvas comes into view, at the northern end of the settlement. Before she can inquire as to what it is— a marketplace, Rey imagines— they’ve passed it, as well as a massive heap of ancient ruins and a few outlying homesteads. The spires grow denser here and thinner there as they fly on, all of them towering and immovable and ancient, but Rey sees no other signs of civilization.

 

Then the sea appears on the horizon— churning, writhing, its fearsome waves tipped in white froth, it waters storm-black— and a few seconds after, the land falls away in steep cliffs. They continue on, out over the dark sea, the rain intensifying. An occasional bolt of lightning strikes down at the water; each time, it makes Rey grip the arms of her chair ever tighter. From the seat beside her, an arm stretches out, and Gozetta clutches at her hand.

 

“Where is it that we’re going, exactly?” she asks, sounding nervous.

 

“An island.” Poe’s answer is distracted, focused as he is on piloting.

 

Brixie shoots a quick a smile back at them. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there.”

 

Sure enough, after a few more minutes of roiling sea and perilous cracks of lightning, a large incurvate island takes shape in the distance. The closer they fly to it, the larger it seems to loom in the cockpit viewport. Its mountainous edges rise up higher on one end than the other, like a bowl that is in mid-spin.

 

Poe and Brixie take them up, up, up into the clouds so that they may pass over the snow-tipped peaks. When they pitch down into the island’s interior, Rey begins to understand the shape of it; it _is_ a great bowl. If the seas of Batuu pitched up this massive hunk of land, some primordial giant took a massive spoon and scooped out its middle, so that a valley— almost perfectly spherical in shape and the size of three Starship Graveyards, rich with grass and trees and life— is hidden within its high rim.

 

“Volcanic crater,” Gozetta notes. Her face is pallid and dotted with sweat.

 

“Hm?” Rey hums, leaning forward to take it all in, as they descend deeper and deeper into the valley.

 

Her sister’s voice wobbles precariously as she imparts another one of her incongruous tidbits of knowledge. “Volcanic activity. Pushes the land up, then it collapses.”

 

“You alright?”

 

“I don’t—like storms. They…” Gozetta is panting, clearly shaken, but she manages to get out, “They remind me of Jakku. The sandstorms.”

 

“Oh, Goz,” murmurs Rey. She gives Gozetta’s hand, damp and cold and still clutching hers, a gentle squeeze.

 

Towards one end of the valley, tucked in beneath the high parapets of the crater edges, is a small building. Even in the storm, it’s visible: its bronze and glass surface gleams in reflection of the periodic lightning flashes as they approach.

 

The Dameron siblings bring them down as close as they can to the building, and a small, poncho-clad person rushes out, waving at them.

 

Gozetta squints. “Who’s that?”

 

“That is Rose Tico,” Poe informs them, finally relaxing enough to look back while Brixie commences shutdown of the engines and navicomputer.

 

“And this,” he adds, a rakish grin tugging at his lips, “is her island.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“It’s not that I own the whole thing—I don’t have that kind of money,” Rose says with a diffident chuckle, after she’s helped them get in from the rain and introductions have been made.

 

Most of the group already knows of each other— Poe and Finn and Rose are friends from the war of course, Brixie and the group are familiar with each other from her brother’s stories, Gozetta is known by name and Poe’s frequent eye-rolling if nothing else— but still, this is the first actual meeting for most of them. Rey, in particular, is eager to make the acquaintance of the young senator who walked away from the First Order, and of the woman who has carved out a place for herself and her fathiers on this island.

 

She’d expected handshakes and civility, and had been moved by the warm, welcoming hugs she received from both.

 

Now their luggage is piled in a sodden heap by the front door; everyone is bundled up in blankets around an antiquated fireplace in the living room, where a real fire crackles merrily. Mugs of hot chocolate warm their rain-chilled hands.

 

“It’s just that most people coming to Batuu are looking for the Black Spire Outpost. They don’t care about some uninhabited crater island in the middle of the sea. So I guess by default, it belongs to me. And the fathiers and the banthas, and a few other harmless creatures that have made their home here.”

 

They’re seated on an array of worn but comfortable sofas and loungers. Brixie’s face had fallen, after introductions were finished, when Finn mentioned that the Captain was taking a holocall from his mother in the spare bedroom, and may not be out for a while. But since then she’s seemed too engrossed in conversation with Rose to bemoan his absence.

 

Rey wishes it were so easy for her not to worry about him: where exactly is he in the house, what are he and his mother discussing, why has he been so… ‘mopey’... lately?

 

“I was hoping to give you a tour of the island when you arrived, but obviously… that’s not happening today.”

 

Rose shakes her head at the rain still pelting the large windows that stretch from floor to ceiling, interrupting the exposed copper-plated walls every meter or so. The light is fading quickly outside; the storm is bringing an early evening to the island.

 

The architecture of the home is fascinating to Rey; the rooms have a modular, hodgepodge feel that is very different from the places she has been on Chandrila or Gatalenta. It does remind her a bit of Jakku, though.

 

 _Old shipping storage containers I got for a song,_ Rose had explained, when they’d first come inside. _Broke them down and soldered them back together all by myself._

 

 _With a little help from me_ , Finn had added.

 

She’d smiled, an expression at once sad and fond. _He was mostly in charge of keeping the fathiers away_.

 

Rey glances around the room, a combination of living room and kitchen made by what appears to be four storage containers stripped of their interior walls and fused together. Despite the harsh rust-hued metal of the walls, floor, and ceiling, the place is very comfortable, made so by bantha wool rugs, steel vases full of dainty yellow flowers, and an assortment of art crafted from wiring, stone, wool, wood, glass, and bits of metal.

 

Again, she is reminded of her AT-AT days; it’s no wonder she feels at home here.

 

“My parents were miners,” she hears Rose say, clearly having noticed Rey’s wandering gaze. Rose picks up an ornament from a nearby end table— various pieces of colorful glass twisted into wire to make a fruit tree— and passes it to Rey. “But in the little spare time they had, they were artists. Metalwork, mostly, but they used other materials when they could. They made things like this…”

 

Rey runs her finger across a wire branch— an echo of a dream rippling through her— before looking back to Rose. She’s pulling a necklace free from the neckline of her heavy wool sweater; at the end of its leather cord hangs a medallion, burnished gold and fashioned in the shape of a crescent moon.

 

“Haysian smelt,” Rose tells her.

 

Rey smiles. “Beautiful.”

 

“My sister had the other half.” Rose stares forlornly down at the medallion.

 

“Th—these are so pretty!” Brixie exclaims, gesturing to a vase bursting with tiny yellow flowers that sits on a coffee table. “What are they?”

 

“Delia pavorum,” Finn answers. “They grow all over the island.”

 

He has moved himself from a reclining lounger chair to the sofa where Rose and Brixie are seated, and one of his arms has wound its way around Rose’s shoulders. Rose sighs, leaning into him.

 

“Very beautiful,” Rey whispers.

 

This is a comfortable place, and capable of withstanding the raging elements outside; it is a testament to the fortitude of the woman who built it. And yet her melancholy seems to be ingrained in everything. The tree, Rey now wonders: is it from her home planet? And the statue carved from black petrified wood that stands by the window— is that meant to be a tall, lean woman? It could be; Rey can see it. Does the face resemble Rose’s, ever so slightly? Is it her sister?

 

Is this home a memorial, or a mausoleum? (Is that why it reminds her of Jakku? Is that what her AT-AT seemed like, to _him_?)

 

Whether from curiosity or an uncharacteristic empathy towards their host, it is Gozetta who steers them back towards safer waters. “What I don’t understand,” she begins, “is why bring the fathiers and banthas to _this_ island? Why not just set them free somewhere—their homeworld or something?”

 

Rose nods gratefully. “Oh! Yeah. That’s, uh—a good question. So, the fathiers have spent their whole life racing, and being cooped up in tiny pens in between races and during transit—ever since they were born, and were taken from their mothers. They had no chance to learn how to survive in the wild. So I can’t just release them into their natural habitat—they’d be picked off by predators. But this island doesn’t have those predators.”

 

“They’ve got a second chance at life here,” Rey says, peering into the fire. “They’re safe and cared for, but they can be free.”

 

Brixie hums in agreement. “Free but safe and cared for—sounds like my bees.”

 

“Exactly!” Rose cracks a smile at that, wiping her eyes. “You keep bees? I’d love to have some here. But—yeah. Free and safe and cared for—that’s the idea, I guess. And the banthas—well, to be honest, they’re for wool and milk. Some of it, I use myself. But most of it, I sell at the Outpost. I grow most of my own food here too, but some things you just can’t grow, you gotta buy.”

 

“That’s an awful lot of work,” Gozetta says, sounding doubtful.

 

Rose shakes her head. “I don’t mind work.”

 

Brixie perks up. “Poe's told me that about you—you’re a mechanic and an engineer, aren’t you?”

 

Though Rey would normally find the discussion captivating— Brixie and Rose’s stories from their respective careers in droidcraft and shipcraft— right now her mind wanders.

 

She’s still thinking about _him_.

 

She hears the topics shifting as if listening through a closed door. They move on from engineering, to beekeeping, to sabacc, to fathier herd social structure— they organize themselves in clans around the mothers, she catches Rose saying— to Poe, who has crashed out in his chair, exhausted from days of flying. But she’s only half-aware.

 

He’s in this house. Somewhere, past these metal walls, down one of those metal corridors that lead to other converted storage containers and fuel tanks, he is talking to his mother. At any moment, he might appear.

 

Rey had thought herself inured, yet now she waits on tenterhooks with bated breath, willing him to materialize.

 

She can’t feel his presence, of course. She can’t feel anything, she can’t allow that. But she wishes, not for the first time since he’s come back into her life, that she had the courage to open herself back up to the Force, and seek him out.

 

Another flash of the dream. Their bodies, free from barriers, moving together under the Chandrilan moonlight. It forces a shiver down her spine; she’d forgotten until just this moment. Has she dreamed that before?

 

Has he?

 

Questions, questions, questions. That’s all she ever has anymore, and nary an answer in sight.

 

“Rose, you should tell ‘em about Cantonica,” Finn says, grinning. “There’s a heroic tale for you.”

 

“Oh, I dunno—that was—”

 

“Uh-uh.” Brixie wags a finger at them in mock-seriousness. “Nope. You can’t just tease us with a mention of some heroic tale, and Cantonica, a place I have _always_ wanted to see, and then not spill.”

 

Rose giggles. “Okay, it’s a long story, but the short version is this: during the war, Finn and I found ourselves in Canto Bight looking for a master codebreaker. Except… we parked illegally. And… _kiiind_ of got thrown in jail.”

 

“Rose! You scoundrel!” cries Brixie, clearly delighted.

 

“We didn’t know any better!” Rose reasons, still giggling, “And we were in a bind. Who has time for docking bays, anyway?”

 

“What happened next?”

 

“Well, we met an actual scoundrel in our cell—a slicer who busted us out then disappeared—only the guards heard us, so we had to jet. Through the sewer pipes.” Rose grimaces at the memory. “And when we climbed out, we were in the racing fathiers’ kennel.”

 

Finn cuts in, chuckling, “Next thing I know, we’re galloping through the town—and when I say through, I mean _through_ , as in, we rode a fathier through two casinos, did edge-only-knows how much damage—and finally shook the police outside of town. Some friends of ours picked us up there, thankfully, but…”

 

“It was a close one,” Rose finishes for him. “We freed those fathiers that day, maybe only temporarily, but I promised myself that I would come back for them.”

 

“And you did.” Brixie sighs, her eyes wide, her face glowing with wonder. She beams at Rose. “Now _that’s_ a hero.”

 

Rose blushes prettily, her cheeks and ears a shade of pink that matches her name. “It’s—I never thought of myself that way. I always thought of my sister as the hero…”

 

Rey has been passively half-listening to this, but at Rose’s demurral, she snaps out of her daze. “I would say what you’ve done here qualifies, Rose.”

 

More blushing. “Thank you,” Rose mumbles.

 

“What about the codebreaker and the slicer?” Gozetta questions, ever the stickler.

 

Finn shrugs. “We, uh—we figured it out on our own, without the codebreaker. And the slicer? Never saw him again.”

 

A break in the conversation extends into a long silence, everyone lost in their thoughts.

 

"At the edge of the galaxy so far away, black was the spire that called me to stay,” Rose recites.

 

“What’s that?” Rey asks. “It’s nice.”

 

“Poem we learned the first time we ever came here—funnily enough, also on a mission during the war,” she explains.

 

“A beacon for drifters forgotten and lost, the spire summoned those broken and tossed—come stay here forever or just pass on through, the spirit of the black spire will forever change you,” says Finn, completing the verse.

 

A deep sigh resounds through the room, made by several people simultaneously. But whereas Finn and Rose’s seem imbued with sad resignation, Brixie’s is breathy. Dreamy.

 

“Wow,” she says, still beaming at Rose. “I… I love that.”

 

Just then, the Captain steps out from one of the shadowy corridors that lead to other parts of the house. The first thing Rey notices about him, as he installs himself on a lounger chair near the fire, rubbing his hands then holding them aloft near the flames in an attempt to get warm, is that he looks tired. He is dressed casually, in what might very well be sleeping attire— a pair of loose dark trousers, and a warm-looking sweater, both black— and his feet are bare. No one else seems to take any note of that detail, and maybe it shouldn’t be such a shock to Rey, to see that part of him. After all, hasn’t she seen him completely undressed? Hasn’t she lain with him, their bare bodies entangled?

 

But all that was a long time ago, and now… now even seeing his bare feet evokes a strange sense of nostalgia and a flutter of bashfulness.

 

Tearing her eyes away from the tendons in the top of his feet, which flex when he fidgets slightly, she studies the rest of him. There are shadows beneath his eyes, and his hair, which has been neatly combed since he reappeared in her life, hangs lank around his face, which is paler than usual.

 

“Everything okay, Solo?” asks Finn, his features pinched with concern.

 

Do his eyes flash with something, some unspoken emotion? Do they cut towards her before rushing back to the fire?

 

 _No,_ she decides. Just a trick of the light.

 

“Fine,” he grunts. It’s all that he says for the remainder of the evening.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Before long, everyone is trying and failing to stifle their yawns.

 

“It’ll be a little tight with all of us here, we might have to bunk up,” Rose warns them merrily, as she stands and stretches her arms high above her head. Her long hair flows down her back, a gleaming river of obsidian in which the firelight picks up sparks of red highlights; her bangs curl wispily away from her face, a charming frame.

 

Rey stands as well, nearly a full head taller than her. Yet Brixie and Gozetta are taller still. And Brixie, Rey observes, has also not failed to miss this. She nods eagerly down at Rose.

 

“Finn and Ben can stay out here on the sofas,” Rose continues.

 

That snaps Rey’s attention back. They’re… not sharing a bed? Neither Brixie and the Captain, nor Finn and Rose? The Captain still hasn’t looked away from the fire; she’s not even sure if he’s heard. And Finn is nodding agreeably. Rey can feel the furrow forming between her brows, but does her best to smooth it out. Maintain a placid, neutral expression.

 

But this is definitely something to be puzzled over, later.

 

“Poe and Gozetta can take my room,” Rose goes on, “I’ll sleep out in the barn—”

 

Brixie frowns. “But—”

 

“No, it’s okay, really! I do it all the time, in the summer. It’s nice out there, very warm. Warmer than in here, to be honest, because of all the hay and blankets.” With that, Rose waves away Brixie’s concerns, before concluding, “And that means you and Rey, you’ll share the second bedroom.”

 

With a shrug, Brixie turns to her. Rey expects disappointment, and is surprised not to find it— only Brixie’s usual happy-go-lucky grin.

 

“Slumber party!” she cheers, doing a little dance.

 

Rey is dubious of both the ‘party’ and the ‘slumber’ aspect of that declaration— she’s utterly consumed with Rose’s deliberate management of the sleeping arrangements, and what they might mean, and what is bothering Captain Solo, and if what is bothering him includes her, and a thousand other wishes and worries— but when Brixie takes her hand and spins her, she smiles and laughs and allows it, not wanting to dampen the mood.

 

There might not be slumber, and there might not be a party, but there is certainly a lot for Rey to think about, as Brixie shivers off to sleep that night beside her.

 

 _What’s wrong with him?_ she wonders. _Isn’t he sleeping well? If not, why?_

 

And some small voice inside herself whispers a question she’d never thought she’d ask, just as she is on the verge of sleep: _Is it me?_

 

 

. . .

 

 

The morning arrives, glittering from the last of the evening’s rain, all blue skies and fresh breeze and two warm suns holding court at opposite ends of the crater’s rim.

 

“Now _this_ is the sort of day I was hoping we’d have to welcome you,” Rose says ruefully, as they sit around her kitchen table eating breakfast. “But better late than never, right?”

 

At that, the Captain darts a sharp glance at Rey, the first time he has looked up since stumbling into the kitchen.

 

It’s as if a bucket of ice has been poured over her head. He still has those shadows under his eyes, his skin is still pale. He looks so tired.

 

 _Why aren’t you sleeping, Ben?_ she wants to ask. _What’s haunting you?_

 

The thought from last night comes back to her, like the faint ringing of a distant bell: might it be Rey herself who is haunting him? As he has haunted her, all these years? She had assumed, upon learning of his rank as Captain, upon seeing him looking so handsome and noble and living a life that seemed so important in comparison to her own, that he had not just survived their separation, but prospered after it. _Was she wrong?_

 

But of course, she cannot reach across the divide between them to ascertain his thoughts, either through the Force or by simply asking.

 

So she must content herself with speculation. And the thorny, creeping vines of hope.

 

Later, with breakfast cleared away and dishes washed, Rose leads them out into the valley. Drops of rain water still cling to everything and bright birdsong emanates from the copses of low leafy trees that dot the landscape. The breeze is gentle on their faces, the suns warm them.

 

Now Rey has a chance to better get a feel for the valley. It really is shaped like a deep bowl, the rim rising in all directions around them. Again, she notices that one side soars higher than the other, and is dotted with snow at its peaks. Three great rivers snake down from those peaks; they trisect the plains and branch off here and there into smaller brooks and streams, even a few small lakes.

 

“There,” Rose breathes, pointing to a distant clump of huge, long-legged beasts. They might be comical, for their large jutting ears that extend from their small heads like wings, or for their tiny slitted noses and mouths beneath large, cervine eyes. But they are too powerful, too tall and too densely muscled to be truly laughable. And they move with too much grace on their long, elegantly tapered legs. “There they are.”

 

“Is that all of them?” Brixie wonders.

 

“Nope. Just one herd. They’re matriarchal, and matrilineal—all the adults you see are females and mothers. The males are around somewhere. Some of them follow the herds—there are three altogether, about forty fathiers in total although it’s calving season so there’ll be more soon—and some of them live off in the eastern forest.” Rose nods towards a particularly dense cluster of trees on one side of the valley, near the larger of the two rising suns.

 

“Bees are the same,” Brixie tells her. “Matriarchal, I mean. The hive is organized around the queen.”

 

The look Rose shoots Brixie is so appreciative and full of fascination that it makes _Rey_ blush.

 

“As it should be,” Gozetta sniffs.

 

“Hmph,” is Poe’s droll response, from somewhere in the back of the group. Gozetta shushes him.

 

They’ve come close enough to the herd to be able to spot previously indistinguishable details on the fathiers: the dark stripe of fur that grows down their flat noses, the wispy tufts of white at the edges of their ears. The tawny luster of their coats. Their long switching tails, which mostly serve to swat away flies.

 

“See the one with the scar? She’s the boss,” Finn informs them. He points towards the biggest fathier in the herd, whose head reaches just slightly higher than the other adults. A series of deep, painful-looking scars ring her neck and shoulders, even branching up and across her dainty snout.

 

Rey winces at the sight. “What happened to her?”

 

“A lifetime of racing,” Rose answers, a hardened angry edge to her voice. “That’s how they were all treated—she just endured it for the longest.”

 

“Horrific,” murmurs the Captain, at last breaking his silence. He and Brixie are not walking together, she notices. Brixie has flocked to Rose’s side, maybe a little fascinated herself.

 

Rey turns to him, studying the jagged healed scar that traverses his own face. She doesn’t mean for her eyes to linger, so she is more than a little embarrassed when he catches her staring. His brows furrow, and she whirls back towards the fathiers.

 

She wants to reach out and touch it, touch him, but she does not dare; she shoves her hands deep in the pocket of her wool coat, just in case she loses all sense and considers giving in to that urge.

 

Rose lets out a long sigh. When she finally speaks, it is cheerfully, and on a different topic.

 

“I need to make a run to the Outpost today and stock up on supplies, just some foodstuffs. And sell the wool we’ve sheared, now that summer is here. And buy some beer—much as I love the koyo wine you brought, thank you very much Commander Dameron,” here she winks at Poe, who performs a silly little bow, “I’m more of a beer girl myself. Oh! And James needs some supplies.”

 

“James?” asks Gozetta, frowning.

 

“The vet droid,” Finn explains. “He’s off tagging a couple of the new males Rose got last week.”

 

Poe pipes up, addressing Rose: “Hey, why don’t we all go to the Outpost? I, for one, would like to finally see Oga Garra's cantina up close.”

 

There is a general murmur of agreement; Poe offers up _Pathfinder_ , and within twenty minutes of returning to Rose’s homestead, Rey finds herself once more strapped into a seat aboard the Dameron family's light freighter, hurtling back over the sea, over the towering black spires— gleaming today, still wet from yesterday’s rainfall— back towards civilization.

 

For one wild second, she hopes that she can steal a moment with the Captain aboard the ship. She’d like to speak to him, maybe. She might be ready, or very nearly ready, to say some of the things that have been on her mind.

 

But he assumes the position of Poe’s co-pilot, and does not speak to anyone but Poe for the duration of the flight.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After receiving clearance from the Outpost’s traffic controllers, Poe puts them down on Docking Bay Nine. They descend in the turbolift from the elevated platform, and step out directly into a labyrinth of shaded streets paved with broken pieces of the same rough black timber-turned-stone that looms high above their heads.

 

If the marketplace at Niima Outpost was rough and tumble but familiar, and the air conditioned environs of the Hanna City Mall or the bright neon bustle of the Old Hannatown Market were intimidating, the Merchant Row of Black Spire Outpost is some combination of them all.

 

The alleys are shady, protected from both rain and Batuu’s two suns by the stretched canvas that covers them. The population is clearly comprised of denizens of the rougher trades— pirates and smugglers and bounty hunters strut the narrow lanes without subterfuge— but the merchandise available is endless, ranging from the innocuous to the obviously illegal. Toys, weapons, food, pleasure, gambling, spice, alcohol, ship parts, entire ships… it seems to Rey, as the group moseys up one alley and down another, that there is nothing that cannot be bought on Batuu for the right price.

 

She is exiting a toy store, of all places— in whose window Gozetta spied a new model of starfighter toy that she insisted her sons must have— arm-in-arm and chatting with her sister, when it happens.

 

Across the passageway there is a rolling cart operated by an elderly Human woman, who is barking out a promotion of her wares. As Rey steps out onto the uneven rock-hewn road, she spots a man standing by that cart, holding a metal thermos. His posture is ramrod straight, one arm tucked behind his back, as he tips his head back and drinks. He is sharply dressed in a black wool trench coat and boots, his hands gloved in black leather.

 

After he has drank his fill, his eyes, blue-green like the sea, gravitate towards Rey. And on her they remain, long past the point of politeness.

 

Rey returns his gaze, at first because she does not realize she is the subject, then once she does, because she cannot comprehend the _reason_ for it. There is something familiar in his tall, lanky build, in his rigid posture, and in the sneering smile that teases at his mouth. He is unmistakably alert to his surroundings, head turning this way and that to watch the passersby. Even the devastatingly sharp side part of his coppery hair speaks to Rey of a personality both inflexible and exacting.

 

He looks to be a man who is very arrogant, and at the same time, is always on his guard against ambush. Ready to bite at any moment, regardless of the severity of the threat of being bitten.

 

But his eyes glow with interest, as he rakes them up and down Rey’s body.

 

Rey is the one to look away first; she finds her face strangely heated. Who is he to look at her, a stranger, like that? And why does _he_ look so familiar to her?

 

Something nags at her, a memory long since set aside, but she cannot quite grasp it.

 

“Armitage Hux,” Rose says in her ear, voice pitched low. “He’s an executive at Jinata Security, a private security firm that does a lot of business here in the Outer Rim. A real big deal, supposedly, although he still spends plenty of time down here in the grime with the rest of us commoners, doing who _knows_ what.”

 

The group moves onwards up the alley, but her curiosity gets the better of her, so Rey spares one more backwards glance at this Armitage Hux character. His eyes still follow her, and his lip is curled— in distaste or attraction, she cannot be sure.

 

When she turns forward once more, she discovers that Captain Solo has silently been watching all of this unfold. Brows knitted, mouth downturned, his gaze flicks back to Armitage, then returns to her. He nods his head, ever so slightly. Slightly enough that perhaps the nod is not meant for Rey, but only for himself.

 

And though he continues walking without comment, it is obvious that he has missed nothing.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Oga Garra's cantina puts Ergel’s bar to shame. It’s a windowless establishment built in a hollowed-out chamber within one of the countless spires around the Outpost, accessible only by a spiraling set of stairs that rise within its tall, narrow confines. The place is warm, probably halfway to full occupancy; many of Batuu’s residents and visitors are taking advantage of its dark cool refuge on this sunny afternoon.

 

A large circular bar in the center of the cantina, decorated with the same neon glowpanels as those that illuminate the cantina from the ceiling, is manned by three bartenders. The clientele is as varied in species as the bar is in the hundreds of bottles that sit on the many, many shelves behind the bartenders.

 

But there is no menu to be seen. As Rose informs them, one simply walks up to the bar and orders. Whatever they request, Oga Garra is sure to have on hand.

 

Poe, Brixie, and the Captain do just that while the others make their way around the bar, seeking an open table. They luck upon one, nestled in the wall at the other end of the cantina, and quickly snag it for their group.

 

Within a minute of sitting, Finn and Gozetta become involved in a debate over centrist versus populist government— a new favorite point of contention for her, since she began the Modes of Democracy module in her course— and, hopelessly lost in the sea of planets and systems they’re discussing, Rey turns to offer Rose a hopeful smile.

 

It’s as much of an opening as Rose needs. “Hey, uh—what’s Brixie’s—deal?” she asks lightly.

 

“Deal?” Rey shakes her head, not following.

 

“Her and Ben…?”

 

“Oh, I—I don’t know. You’d have to ask her,” she demurs.

 

Rose narrows her eyes, staring across the cantina. “Well, she’s Poe’s little sister, so I trust that she’s a good person. It’s just…”

 

“She is,” Rey assures her. “She’s a good person.”

 

“But is she a good person for _Ben_?” Rose presses, with an arched brow.

 

Panicked at the thought of revealing too much, Rey clutches the edge of the booth's cushion. Sputtering, she manages, “I—er, I can’t—can’t be the judge of that, I don’t think.”

 

“Well, I’ve known him through Finn for years, and I think I can safely say—I don’t see it.” Rose shrugs. “He’s so… look, I _really_ like Brixie. I mean, trust me, I really like her. But she’s so… I dunno. Their dynamic confuses me.”

 

“Why is that?” Rey ventures, breathless from the vines of hope tightening around her lungs.

 

But she doesn’t get an answer; the rest of their party has joined them, pushing into the semi-circular booth with drinks procured, and Rose merely shakes her head, abandoning the subject. Because Rey was the last to sit in the booth, beside Rose and across from Finn and Gozetta, it is she who is now pushed inward by the Captain. Across the round table, Poe and Brixie shove in next to her sister. Once everyone has a frosty mug of Batuu Brew in hand, there is a toast, and a lull while they all take a few swigs.

 

He is sitting next to her. Their thighs are touching.

 

Her mouth has gone dry. Her heart is beating so loudly she wonders if he can hear it over the lively jizz-wail tunes being pumped out of the cantina’s countless speakers. Her breaths are labored, short, and shallow.

 

His arm brushes hers when he brings his brew to his lips and drinks deeply. She does the same, though her nervousness makes it difficult to swallow properly, and some spills down her chin. She is so close to him, nearly cuddling like they used to in the booth of the _Falcon_ , and yet they are so far, not speaking, not looking at one another.

 

But maybe they could.

 

After wiping her chin dry, she sneaks a sidelong peek at him, and finds him once again watching her, as he was in earlier the alley. Unprepared for that, she jerks her head in the other direction and pretends to be utterly fascinated in a swoop race unfurling on one of the many holoscreens adorning the walls.

 

“What do you _mean_ , you don’t come here often?” Brixie bursts out, looking appalled. “Cute thing like you? I’d be in here all the time, just for the fun of it. I bet you could find anything you were looking for… if you know what I mean.” She winks theatrically for effect.

 

“Who, me?” Rose titters.

 

“Yeah, you, crumblebun,” Brixie volleys back, also giggling, her brew already half-finished. “You’re cute as a button.”

 

Rose lets out a delighted, shrieking cackle. “Oh stop!” She pauses long enough to smirk and flutter her lashes. “Okay, go on.”

 

“This _does_ seem to be the most interesting place onworld,” Gozetta remarks haughtily, interrupting the exchange.

 

Rey stifles her own laugh at that, at her sister’s ingrained snobbiness, and across the table, she sees Poe do the same. Again she feels _his_ eyes cut towards her, and remain there, but she keeps hers trained on Rose and Brixie as they begin tossing out increasingly salacious evening plans.

 

The oddest thing happens, however, when she does finally dare to look his way again. He’s staring down into the dark golden depths of his brew, quietly spinning the mug in slow revolutions, and there is a faint, fond smile quirking up one side of his lush mouth.

 

He doesn’t seem perturbed by Rose’s and Brixie’s flirtations, not in the least. Taking advantage of his distraction, she gapes at his scar, once again struck by the need to reach out and touch it. Suddenly, as if it is _he_ who has felt her eyes on _him_ , he looks up, directly into her eyes. Screwing up her courage, Rey does her best to smile at him.

 

To her utter shock, he returns it, before turning to scan the crowded cantina.

 

“We saw that man at the market, didn’t we?” he interjects, over the table’s giggling rehash of past dates gone awry. The question is directed to everyone, yet Rey cannot help feeling that it’s really only meant for her. When their eyes meet once more, he cants his head in the direction of said man.

 

There, standing stiffly with one elbow propped on the bar in an awkward attempt at a lean, is the tall redhead who was staring at her in the Merchant Row. Armitage Hux. He’s staring now as well, again without subtlety. And again, Rey is surprised— maybe she should not be, but she finds that she is— that when he locks eyes with her, he bends forward in what is unmistakably a bow.

 

Shocked, Rey spins back around in her seat, blushing.

 

It’s hard to say why the gesture has shocked her. It could be the courtesy of it. Or it could be that Rey remembers now— remembers why he looks familiar.

 

Here is what comes back to her: a bunker half-buried in a dune, in which there lives an Abednedo named Mashra. Her mother, or the closest thing she could remember having to one in her nineteen years of life. A scalding cup of herbal tea, an argument, a shocking truth revealed. A holoprojection of a news bulletin. And at the tail end of it, when her world had been shattered and she was watching in numb horror, a quick clip of a funeral procession. Six men carrying a coffin out of a temple, down an austerely clean road on a distant planet called Arkanis.

 

Brendol Hux’s funeral.

 

Armitage had been there. She remembers now, seeing his pinched face among the pallbearers.

 

Hadn’t he been in formal military dress at the time, in clean bright New Republic whites?

 

Rey licks her lips, mind racing frantically to work through this. Could she be misremembering? Surely not. They share a last name, and there’d been a picture of the deceased First Order officer— they’d practically shared the same face. No, this is not coincidence and she has not mistaken his identity. He must have left the military at some point between then and now. And… he joined the private sector?

 

Stranger things have happened, she supposes.

 

Everyone around her erupts into laughter at some joke she has not heard. Rey looks again to the bar. Still he is eying her. He grins, when he sees her doing the same to him. If pressed, she would be torn between describing his countenance as lecherous, scornful, or teasing. It is all three, and maybe that’s why it unsettles her.

 

And yet, she dips her head belatedly in response to his bow.

 

And yet, when he raises that same metal thermos to her— filled with who knows what— then tips it back, she does the same.

 

And yet, maybe against her instincts, she is flattered by his attention, long after he has turned and swept out of the cantina, thermos in hand.

 

It’s not that she found him particularly handsome or enthralling, only… she’s received so little of that kind of attention in her life.

 

When she wrangles her thoughts, tuning back in to her party, they are arguing over the performance of one holostar versus another in some holofilm she has not seen. She knows the Captain is watching her again, can feel his eyes boring into her. A deep breath, and she meets them. They are unwavering, riveted to her face.

 

As in the alley, he has missed none of what has occurred.

 

And what’s more, there is something in his searching gaze, his pursed lips, his raised brows, that suggests that he might, in fact, be in complete agreement with the redheaded stranger’s high opinion of her.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“I just… I miss her so much,” Rose warbles.

 

Brixie, slumped over with her cheek in her palm, nods blearily. “It’s the same for me and Terena.”

 

She and Brixie and Rey are sitting around the kitchen table many hours later, the only ones still awake beside Finn and the Captain, who are have disappeared. Gone for a walk, the three of them surmise.

 

They’re a little inebriated. Just a little. Just enough to lower their defenses, just enough to invoke a confessional, intimate atmosphere around the rough-hewn wooden table.

 

Rose continues, “Pae-pae was always my hero. I looked to her for so many things, and without her, I’ve just felt so…”

 

“Lost,” Rey offers.

 

“Yeah. This—break up, I guess you’d call it—with Finn, it hasn’t made things easier.”

 

“What happened?” asks Brixie, also speaking softly. Maybe the most softly Rey has ever heard. She lays one sun-kissed hand on Rose’s paler one, which elicits a sad smile from their host.

 

“He’s not—you know where he came from, right? How he was—raised, if you can call it that? He’s not someone who can sit around caring for fathiers.” Rose shakes her head. “I’m tired, guys. I’m tired of war. I’m tired of the politics of the galaxy. Finn isn’t. I just want to protect something, I want to do this one good thing. I think—he’d never agree with this, so just between us—but I think fighting is the only thing he thinks he’s any good at. Not being a soldier, but… fighting for others, I guess. Protecting something, but… in his own way?”  

 

Brixie huffs. “But can’t you—”

 

“It’s just… the distance. The reconstruction effort is going to be in full-swing for a long time. And Finn wants to be a part of that. I get that, I do, but I just…”

 

Rey winces, understanding all too well.

 

“Sometimes making the choice we think is best…” she starts, before the words seem to choke her. She takes a deep breath, and grits out, “Whether or not the ones we love agree… can be…” Another fraught pause. “…Very painful,” she finally manages.

 

Rose face crumples. “Did you—”

 

“Yes,” she cuts across, not wanting to belabor the point, “a—a long time ago.”

 

“I’m so sorry,” Rose says mournfully.

 

Brixie frowns. “I didn’t know that, Rey.” She lays her free hand atop Rey’s. “Is it someone we know?”

 

She’s not very good at lying. Her face usually gives her away. It’s easier for her to demur, and distract, than it is to out-and-out dissemble. It always has been. But the thought of admitting that the great lost love of her life is the same man with whom Brixie has spent weeks flirting will do no favors to anyone at this table. It would hurt her to admit as much as it would hurt Brixie to hear, she thinks.

 

And she bears no resentment towards the younger woman, for being unaware of her feelings, for chasing her own happiness.

 

So Rey does something she rarely does: she lies.

 

“No,” she says, with as straight a face as she can. Brixie nods sympathetically.

 

With a click of her tongue, Rose declares, “Whoever they were, they were an idiot to give you up.” Before she can sputter out a denial to that, Rose prompts, “What did you do, after? I mean—this is my first—big break up, I guess. What comes next?”  

 

“I just… kept going. I worked, I slept, I ate. I was—I was on Jakku then, waiting for my family. And eventually, they—well, they returned.”

 

Rey looks down at Brixie’s hand on hers, swallowing heavily. Brixie gives it a squeeze and mutters, “Lucky you.”

 

She cannot be sure if Brixie is referring sarcastically to Rey's family, or mournfully to her own. Maybe the response is double-edged.

“Hey, be nice,” Rose chides gently. “Gozetta’s not so bad. She and Poe are kinda cute together. When they're not squabbling.”

 

Rey looks up, curious as to Brixie’s thoughts. The younger woman gives a beleaguered groan, then laughs at herself. “Ugh… okay, maybe… Gozetta is okay. I just wish she had told me years ago that she was such a killer sabacc player! I guess she can stay. The rest of ‘em, though—”

 

“I drew a lot too,” Rey blurts out, not wanting to get any deeper into the subject of her family.

 

“Hm?” both women ask, in harmony.

 

“After…” she wavers, but only for a second. “After everything. I would sketch for hours.”

 

The mood swings back towards serious.

 

“Me too,” Rose admits. “I do that. Mechanical drawings mostly, ideas I have for machines here on the island. And—” she pauses to swing her arm out at the artwork around her home, “all of this stuff. But some days it’s hard—some days the ideas don’t come. And I just sit in front of a blank piece of paper, or a bunch of materials I found, and I can’t think of a single thing I feel like creating.”

 

Rey nods. “I like to sketch natural things. It’s… less demanding, more room for messiness and mistakes.” Another second of hesitation follows, in which she recalls how honest the other two have been; guilt strikes at her, for lying to them. So she confesses, “It feels like… a communion, between me and the world around me. It helps, on those days when I feel disconnected. Which can be… often.”

 

“I’ll give it a shot,” Rose replies, her expression turned thoughtful. “It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels that way.”

 

“Me three.” Brixie’s smile is slightly brittle. “Ever since—Terena. I just—smile, and laugh, and keep going. What else can I do? My parents need that from me.”

 

“You’re a good sister.” Rey’s voice is fainter than she’d like, but full of conviction. “And a good daughter.”

 

“Not half as good as you, Rey.”

 

She shakes her head, mumbling a protest.

 

Rose huffs out a laugh. “It’s okay! You’re allowed to take the compliment.”

 

“I’m a little rusty at that, but… thank you,” Rey manages, lips wobbling. “Let’s just—we have all done our best, as sisters.”

 

It’s not clear who is the first to whimper. But it is Brixie who hiccups, voice unsteady, “Rose Tico, by the eternal core, if you cry—I’m going to cry.”

 

“I don’t think I can help it,” Rose mutters, eyes welling.

 

Brixie lets out a soft, sad sob. “All right that’s it! Group hug. Both of you get in here, now.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, much later, when they have dried their eyes and scrounged up some protato-based junk food, then relocated from the table to the rumpled sofas, Rey notices something. One of the living room’s large windows has been left slightly ajar, letting in the mild night air. And sitting right outside that open window, in two fibergrown lounge chairs, are Finn and the Captain.

 

It’s so dark outside, she almost misses them. They might have gotten away with hiding out there indefinitely, if not for the light from the lanterns in the house spilling out over them.

 

She doesn’t hear them speaking. And as she steals glimpses of them while they carry on inside, she becomes more and more convinced that this is because they have been listening in on Rey, Brixie, and Rose’s conversation.

 

Of the two, it’s the Captain’s face that Rey’s eyes keep drifting towards. Even half cast in shadow, she can tell his normally plush lips are pressed together tightly. His dark eyes are troubled, or so she thinks, when he gives one quick look back through the window at her, before resuming his apparently enthralled perusal of the starry sky.

 

She thinks about that look, a lot. For a long time after.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The next afternoon, when everyone else seems to be have wandered off in pursuit of their own entertainment, Rey takes her old sketchbook and heads out into the valley, with the idea of drawing some of the fathiers. She doesn’t get far before she stumbles upon Finn, who— with the assistance of the vet droid, J8-MS— is gently tagging the ears of a pair newborn fathier calves.

 

Its mother looks on nervously, stamping its hooved feet. So huge is the beast, standing about three meters high at the shoulder and densely muscled, that Rey thinks she can feel slight reverberations in the ground each time its hoof makes contact.

 

It’s a delicate balance on this island, as in all things. Fathiers and banthas, neither domestic nor wild, attempting to live in peace with a Human and her droids. Yet Rose seems to handle it with ease.

 

Finn looks up as she nears. “Rey, hi!”

 

“Hullo,” she murmurs, watching as the now-tagged calves lunge up onto their thin wobbly legs. They bleat for their mother until she swoops in to do a sniffing inspection of them. After handing off the supplies to J8-MS, who trills out a few directives before retreating back to the homestead, Finn turns his attention to Rey.

 

“Cute, aren’t they? Wish I could be around more for this kind of thing. This is the fun part of keeping a fathier sanctuary.”

 

For a moment, Rey watches. The matriarch turns, leading them back towards some safer, less exposed part of the plains, and prancing, craning their tiny heads up to receive her snuffled affections, they follow.

 

Rey wonders if she was cared for like that, when she was small. Did she ever feel safe enough to play, as children are meant to? Ergel had showed her holos of her with her sisters when he returned, but she has only the vaguest memory of those times.

 

“You okay?”

 

“I was just—” She shifts from foot to foot, clutching her sketchbook to her chest. “Going for a walk, if you’d like to join me.”

 

He smiles, wide and bright. “I’d love to. Where’re we walking?”

 

“I should ask you that, I think.”

 

“There’s a small lake over that way,” he says, tipping his head towards the eastern side of the valley. “The fathiers like to gather there in the afternoon. Some of the banthas, too.” He eyes the sketchbook, then smirks. “Good subjects, maybe?”

 

“Right then, sounds perfect.” She returns his smile, cheered by the prospect of an afternoon well-spent.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They’ve been traipsing through the high grass for about a half an hour, exchanging bland bits of their personal histories, getting to know each other, when Rey finally finds the tenacity to blurt:

 

“How did you do it, Finn? How did you just… leave it all behind?”

 

He sighs, not needing any clarification to know exactly what she means. “It was during Ovanis, my first real battle. Poe’s probably told you, that’s where we intercepted him. And where I broke him out, later. When I defected.”

 

Rey nods.

 

“All around me, my brothers-in-arms were killing Resistance soldiers. Killing innocents, too—the Crèche, and Ottegans and Trandoshans. Even killing these giant glowy flying creatures—I don’t know the name for them, but I know they definitely weren’t fighting us, they were just trying to get the Humans to safety. Protecting their own.”

 

“Oh,” she gasps. Finn’s face is creased in consternation at the memory. She doesn’t want to interrupt, but she regrets asking him now, and wishes she could tell him to forget it.

 

“I knew right then I wasn’t a soldier,” he goes on. “Didn’t matter that I was raised that way, I just… knew that wasn’t me. And it was never gonna be me.”

 

“I had a chance, once,” she confesses, pushing the words out before she can second guess herself. “To leave everything behind, and move towards something good. A happy life. Or—I’m convinced it would’ve been. At the time, I wasn’t so sure.”

 

She turns her head to hide her furious blinking— an attempt to stave off her tears. It feels good, to say that out loud to someone impartial who wasn’t there. It’s painful, but a good kind of painful. A relieved kind of painful.

 

In a subdued tone, he remarks, “I’m guessing you didn’t take it.”

 

For a moment, it hurts too much to reply. Finally, she manages:

 

“No, I… didn’t.”

 

Even just those three words are enough to make her voice crack. It all comes rushing back: the jogan fruit, the nights spent in her hammock, the way they touched each other, the way his father smiled approvingly at them, all the unspoken promise of those heady days they shared together. The promise of belonging, dangled in front of her face. And that undercurrent of fear, wretched fear, that spun her head around, that confused her.

 

That dissuaded her.

 

“Oh, Finn,” she sobs. “I didn’t. I stayed. I was… I was young. I was so young. And my decision was—a trusted family friend—an Abednedo who—she was like my mother, I barely remembered my real mother, and I—I thought—I just—” Her words come to a sputtering, faltering end. She’s crying too hard to go on.

 

Relief and pain. She’s swamped by both, after gritting out this confession to a man who barely knows her. Who, she hopes, will keep this secret for her.

 

A pair of solid arms wrap around her, and then she is being pulled into his embrace. “C’mere,” he murmurs. “You’re okay. No judgement, okay? I never really had a family either, besides my fellow ‘troopers. But that was… it was different, I can’t explain it. I didn’t really feel like I belonged until Rose.”

 

“I belonged. I belonged with them.” She’s shaking, from adrenaline and regret and relief. “I chose _wrong_ , Finn. I let myself be… I didn’t…”

 

She presses her face against his chest, letting the tears wrack her body. It hurts, a bitter ache in her throat and her chest and her gut, to say these things aloud. And yet the relief is there, too.

 

Speaking into his shirt, she goes on. “I thought I was doing the right thing—I thought I was protecting someone. From becoming something they—they—they hated, and feared, and—”

 

“It’s okay, Rey,” he repeats. His hand gently runs up and down her back. “Who knows? Maybe that other choice would’ve led to more pain, huh? Listen. Listen to me, Rey.” He tilts back far enough to catch Rey’s eyes. “You’re good, okay? You’re a good person. I know we haven’t known each other very long, but… I’m confident that you are. You’re good.”

 

“I can’t forgive myself,” she mumbles wetly. “I’ve tried to, and I can’t.” She knows she must look a mess, but Finn only seems concerned with comforting her. For that, she is grateful. “But I want to. I want to move forward.”

 

“That’s the first step, isn’t it? You gotta want to move forward before you can.”

 

He offers her a sympathetic smile, his own eyes wet. She sniffles right as another sob bursts free, and his arms tighten around her. Acquiescing to the unspoken invitation, she drops her face back onto his chest, and allows the sorrow to overtake her. He continues rubbing her back and murmuring hushed, consoling words as she weeps.

 

For a while, that is how they remain.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When Rey’s tears have subsided and she has collected herself, and they’ve made their way to the lake’s edge, settling in side-by-side on its grassy banks, she puts forth one more personal question.

 

“Why are you and Rose… taking a break?”

 

He sighs and swats at a bothersome fly with a reed he’s plucked. Rey sticks hers between her teeth, gnawing idly on it while she waits for him to answer.

 

“It’s something we agreed on,” he says at length. “For both our sakes. My life is about to get crazy. I’ll be on Hosnian Prime for the foreseeable future. And she’ll be here.”

 

Rey squints against the lake’s bright reflection of Batuu’s suns. There is a stream that feeds into it, and its burbling serves as soundtrack to the hot afternoon. A few adult fathiers and their young are indeed gathered at the lake’s shores, drinking. Not far from Rey and Finn, a bantha has plodded close to do the same. A flutter of magenta butterflies drifts past before landing in a nearby tree. Beyond it, she can see their trampled path through the grass. And in the distance, she can just make out Rose’s home, under the shadow of the crater’s peaks.

 

A tall figure, she notices, is setting out alone from the house; painstakingly, they pick their way along a trail that ascends the grassy foothills of the crater’s peaks.

 

It’s the Captain. She recognizes the broad span of his shoulders, his solid build, his long legs, his dark hair. But why is he alone?

 

Nevermind. For the time being, she sets that concern to the side.

 

“I think she’s still hurt, though,” she comments to Finn, gently as she can.

 

He swallows, then nods. “I can’t tell you how it hurts me, to add to her pain like that. After Paige… well, we’ve depended on each other a lot, over the years. But Rose has a life for herself here! A good one—one she’s always wanted. And for the next few years—five, at least—I’ll be stuck between Hosnian Prime and Chandrila and Coruscant, with only brief visits out to Batuu. We talked about it. It was tough, but… the distance, our obligations. It’s just too much.”

 

Now it is Finn who is blinking, looking down at the reed he twirls between his fingers. She rests a questioning hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, we don’t have to—are you alright?”

 

“I’m sad,” he replies, without hesitation. Rey frowns, but he only shrugs. “I’ll be honest, I am. But this is important to me. She knows that. And if we find our way back to each other some day, then… it was meant to be.”

 

“And… if you don’t?” she wonders.

 

He coughs out a dry, joyless laugh. “You see the way she was looking at Brixie? She’ll be okay. She’s resilient like that. Nobody’s tougher than my Rose.”

 

“The galaxy is so tough on lovers, and on love.” Rey transfers the reed to her hands, where she rolls it between her palms. Its green taste clings to her tongue, bitter and bright. “It seems like too often, love gets ground away into nothing.”

 

“Hey, not all the time, right?” counters Finn. “Not for the Skywalkers, not for the Damerons. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes… it’s about endurance. And patience.”

 

Rey gives a weary shrug and lets her head droop down to rest atop her bent knees.

 

Having climbed about a hundred meters, the Captain has stopped. She watches silently for a moment; he lowers himself down to a crouch on the mountainside, looking out into the valley. He’s just a speck, and yet, it’s almost as if she can feel his ragged breathlessness, the perspiration beading his brow and back. Can he see her and Finn? Is he watching them? Does he know what they’re discussing? Does he suspect?

 

She allows herself a ludicrous notion, just for a moment: is he jealous?

 

“Sometimes it feels like all I have left is my patience,” she says at last, tearing her eyes away from his distant figure.

 

“Yeah,” sighs Finn, with an understanding nod. “I know exactly what you mean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee, Batuu and Hux and Fathiers, oh my! Some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa style 😏: [Armitage Hux](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Armitage), [Rose Tico](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rose_Tico), [Paige Tico](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Paige_Tico), [the Crèche](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cr%C3%A8che_\(culture\)) and their [Crèche creature](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unidentified_Cr%C3%A8che_creature), the [Ottegans](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ottegan), and the [Trandoshans](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Trandoshan).
> 
> What's a [slicer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Slicer)?
> 
> Where is [Batuu](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Batuu)? On Batuu, where is the [Black Spire Outpost](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Spire_Outpost), [Docking Bay 9](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Docking_Bay_9_\(Batuu\)), [Merchant Row](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Merchant_Row_\(Batuu\)), [Oga Garra's Cantina](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Oga%27s_Cantina), and the [Black Spires](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Spires)? Where is [Cantonica](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cantonica) and where is [Canto Bight](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canto_Bight)?
> 
> What's a [bantha](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bantha) and what's a [fathier](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fathier)? Why and how is [fathier racing](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fathier_racing) a thing? [Originally I was going to base the fathiers' social structure on deer but I wanted them to be matrilineal/matriarchal for Reasons™ so they are loosely based on elephant herd structure instead.]
> 
> What's a [YZ-775](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/YZ-775_medium_transport)? [sidenote: just a general note on travel time, it basically takes... as much time as is required in the plot of the story, is what i've settled on! 😂]
> 
> Some tech! [wall-mounted illuminator bar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wall-mounted_illuminator_bar), [navicomputer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Navigation_computer), [vet droid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vet_droid) [the name J8-MS is my own creation and a reference to series of novels I _loved_ as a kid, which actually made me want to be a vet for a while, _All Creatures Great and Small_ by [James Herriot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Herriot).] Also: [turbolifts](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Turbolift)!
> 
> What is [jizz-wail](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jizz-wail) music?
> 
> What's [Jinata Security](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jinata_Security)?
> 
> Would you drink whatever exactly [Batuu Brew](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Batuu_Brew) is? [You'll probably have a chance to at Galaxy's Edge soon so if you do please report back.]
> 
> There's a [New Republic dress uniform](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/New_Republic_dress_uniform), I have mixed feelings about its aesthetics, I may end up changing it for modern-day 42 ABY.
> 
> What's a [delia pavorum blossom](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Delia_Pavorum)? Is it a reference to the wonderful author and good friend [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum), whose stuff you should absolutely check out? 😉
> 
> My main inspo for Rose's house was this [photo](https://66.media.tumblr.com/de54114ef8e194dae343afcae536229a/tumblr_pgkssy5hHy1r3olv9o7_1280.jpg). You can see more [photos](https://arkitekcher.tumblr.com/post/179460442115/rose-house-sergey-makhno-architects) here although it's, uh... very different from what I wrote in the chapter.
> 
> And [here](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T0P2a6LN63I/UjANuXxwv9I/AAAAAAAAAUg/VuindRx3tHM/s1600/Seongsan_Ilchulbong_Peak_dari_atas.jpg) is some caldera island [inspo](http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2014/01/31/wanderlust-tokyos-volcanic-crater-island-aogashima/).
> 
> Okay, that's all from me. This chapter was a doozy to write because there's a lot going on for everyone and new people and lots of character relationships to explore, so I hope I pulled it off okay and that you enjoyed. Thank you for reading! ❤


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “‘You will stay, I am sure; you will stay and nurse her;’ cried he, turning to her and speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed almost restoring the past. She coloured deeply, and he recollected himself and moved away. She expressed herself most willing, ready, happy to remain.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to the wonderful [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado) and also to [Trixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen) and [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum) who were kind enough to take a look at this chapter and assure me that the pacing was not weird and that this burn was still appropriately slow! You are all the best! 💓

**42 ABY.**

 

“He was the one who told me about Paige,” Rose tells Rey, out of the blue— in a way that seems to be both confession and declaration— when they are laying outside on a blanket that night, after Rey and Finn have returned to the house and the whole group has eaten a late dinner.

 

She and Rose are sprawled out side by side. The high grasses cordon them off from the others like a swaying curtain.

 

They have been speaking thoughtfully for a while in low voices, as nights of stargazing compel people to do, although the exchange had trailed off minutes earlier. Somewhere not too far off, Rey can hear the burbling of one of the valley’s smaller rivers passing them by. The night is cool, but not cold. She’s never had any of this before; laying under a ponderous night sky with friends, small and insignificant yet utterly secure. Dressed in a thick wool sweater and leggings, and wrapped in one of the many bantha wool blankets Rose distributed before they all trooped out here, she feels comfortable. At peace.

 

She hears Brixie let out a giggle in the distance, and the Captain’s low voice rumbles something in reply. That peacefulness ebbs, ever so slightly.

 

“Who?” she asks Rose.

 

The sky is framed by the jagged brow of the crater that rings its way around them. A buttery yellow sliver of moon sits low in the east, but otherwise above them there is only the glittering vault of the cosmos— a cosmos very different from the one she used to peer up at from the top of her AT-AT on Jakku.

 

The sugared fragrance of the delia pavorum blossoms— Rose had mentioned that they bloom only twice a summer, once at its start and once at its end, and the first blooming is already fading— mingles with the scent of herbaceous grass. Rey breathes them both in deeply. She wiggles her bare toes, delighting in the tickle of the cool blades against them.

 

“Four years ago, or just about. I was working aboard the _Corellian Hound_ ,” Rose answers, on a sigh. “The battle of D’Qar had been won, or at least, we’d successfully driven the First Order fleet away from the planet, but Paige had been… lost, in the final bombing run. She’d been on the _Raddus_ , with Finn and Poe, which had already called back all its fighters and made the jump out of there. I had other friends of course, but… it was Ben—I still knew him as Captain Solo back then—he found me, and broke the news about Paige. He didn’t have to. Edge knows he probably had more important things to be doing.”

 

Rey doesn’t know what to say to that, so she hums, faint and sympathetic.

 

“He was so considerate, so much kinder than he had to be, as my commanding officer.” She can hear Rose’s sad sniffle. “That meant… so much to me.”

 

“Of course,” she says.

 

“It still does.”

 

She nods, only to remember that Rose cannot see her. “Yes,” she sighs. “I understand.”

 

“I just wish…” Rose pauses, then dips from a hushed tone to a whisper, not much louder than the breeze rustling the grass. “I wish I could return the favor. He’s a very private person. Very serious, not really a joker. Not one to laugh, you know? Always has been. But… I think there’s something else going on these days. Finn and I have talked about it. Maybe it’s Brixie? Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do with himself, now that the war is over? I dunno.”

 

“Has he,” she swallows, willing her voice not to shake, “really changed so much, since you saw him last?”

 

“Dramatically,” is Rose’s simple response. Simple, but effective. It leaves Rey breathless, as if she’s taken a hit directly to the solar plexus.

 

 _The bell,_ screams her heart. She digs her nails into her palm, trying to calm herself. It’s Brixie. He’s changed because of Brixie, because of their burgeoning relationship. Or the war. Or something else— she doesn’t know the minutiae of his life. It’s nothing.

 

“Oh,” she musters, proud of getting even that much out.

 

Her mind races on ahead, and they lapse back into comfortable silence. Not long after, she hears a snuffling wheeze from Rose; when she props herself up on one elbow to check on her, Rey discovers that she has fallen asleep. She rolls onto her back once more, and sinks deeper into contemplation.

 

Above them, the stars slink across the sky and the moon begins to climb.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Rey, James is going to show me how to milk the banthas today,” Brixie declares the next morning, after they are all gathered around the kitchen table. She shoots her a pointed look, loaded with meaning. “Wanna help?”

 

Rey pauses mid-bite of her toast, the cup of caf in her hand frozen halfway between the table and her lips.

 

“…Sure?” she replies, not yet fully awake. She shrugs and smiles sleepily at the younger woman, to which Brixie nods, looking satisfied.

 

So it happens that an hour later, she strides off through the swaying grass with Brixie, following the wheeled vet droid, who leads them back toward the lake where she and Finn sat the day before.

 

“What do you think of Rose?” asks Brixie abruptly, when they’ve roamed what she must deem a safe distance from the house.

 

“She’s lovely,” Rey says.

 

To this, Brixie huffs her agreement. “Yes, she is.”

 

There’s a meditative breathiness to her words that gives Rey pause. “Are you… having second thoughts, about—about—”

 

“Hm?” Brixie glances over, and frowns at the sight of Rey’s struggle. “About?”

 

Rey grits her teeth. “The Captain?” she makes herself ask.

 

“Oh, I don’t… know. Is that bad? Maybe I like both of them. That’s probably bad, isn’t it?”

 

“No!” It comes out louder than she’d meant, like a frantic yelp. Rey sucks in a calming breath then adds, “I don’t—I don’t think so, Brixie. I don’t know if you can _have_ both, but… there’s nothing wrong with _liking_ both.”

 

“Ben’s brave. And handsome. And a hero,” Brixie reflects, brow furrowing as she speaks, “but sometimes I feel like… he’s distracted? Or something. And Rose is brave and handsome and a hero, too. Well—maybe not handsome.” She gives a dismissive wave of her hand. “But you know what I mean.”

 

“Cute?” prompts Rey.

 

“Adorable,” she sighs. “And we get along, really well.”

 

“Yes, you do,” Rey says, stifling a chuckle. She looks down at her booted feet, minding her steps lest she end up in a pile of bantha dung.

 

“Brixie,” she starts, a moment later, “You have… time. You’re young. You don’t have to make some final decision right this minute. You can just—” Rey just about chokes on the words, but she must say them, she must be better to Brixie than life was to her, she must not let the younger woman make her mistakes…

 

“You’re allowed to just enjoy yourself right now.”

 

Brixie pouts. “But that’s not me. I want love, real love, the kind that keeps you up at night and puts butterflies in your stomach and makes you do all sorts of crazy things. And commitment. Like the Skywalkers! I want to know where I stand—I don’t want to dither along, not knowing how I feel or how somebody feels about me.” She shakes her head, repeating, “That’s not me!”

 

“I know,” says Rey, in a neutral tone, wearing a bland smile. And she does; she can see how badly Brixie wants the kind of love she herself once had. It makes her worry for the younger woman, but she holds her tongue, and remarks instead, “I doubt you’ll want for suitors—suitors who’d be more than happy to offer you that sort of thing.”

 

“Oh, _you_.” Brixie titters, threading her arm through Rey’s.

 

And then the time for talk of love has ended, because J8-MS has led them to the small herd of recently-shorn banthas, who shuffle anxiously from side to side in anticipation of being milked, and there is work to be done, and only novices to do it— so their full concentration is required.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The week passes, as all weeks must.

 

Finn is gone as often as he is around, zooming off in his diplomatic shuttle early most mornings, spending long days at the Outpost where he meets with his constituents and prepares himself to step into his position as their senator.

 

Brixie and Rose quickly become thick as thieves, and usually pull Rey and Gozetta into some game or competition or debate they’ve cooked up. Rey is happy to be included, though she never knows whether Gozetta will roll her eyes and sequester herself in her borrowed bedroom with her datapad and the claim that she needs to study, or join in the fun as well. It seems to be about an even split.

 

 _He_ mostly keeps his distance. When he speaks, it is always in that low, serious way of his, and it is always with Poe or Finn or Brixie or Rose— or even Gozetta, on the one occasion they manage some kind of civil exchange of ideas, and he seems impressed, perhaps chastened, to hear she is taking steps to educate herself— but never with Rey.

 

And yet she feels his eyes on her. And yet his handsome face maintains that thoughtful, troubled air, whenever she catches him in the act of watching her. Or vice versa.

 

But he is not fully to blame for his reticence, is he? Rey can no more procure the words to bridge the divide between than he can.

 

Sometimes it seems narrower, sometimes wider, sometimes deeper, sometimes so shallow and small that it would take no more than one step to overcome it, if only one of them could just work up the nerve to do so.

 

But they do not, in the days that pass.

 

And no matter what their separate or shared perception of the divide’s severity may be, it is always undeniably _there_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

One afternoon, when Rose and Brixie have taken themselves on a ramble through the valley's small forest, an excursion from which she has begged off with a vague excuse about a migraine, Rey wanders instead towards the assortment of starships that sit parked near Rose's home.

 

There’s _Pathfinder_ , of course, and the depression in the grass where Finn’s staid, stately shuttle usually rests. And alongside them is _his_ craft, the sleek silvery ship the Captain had arrived in with Lando for that first dinner at the Great House.

 

Furtively, Rey glances around. Seeing no one, she draws closer, curious about its make and model.

 

A yacht, she thinks, guessing purely by the size and pleasing aesthetic. Entranced in her study of the hull, doing her best to ignore the distorted reflection of her face in its mirror-like surface, she makes a complete circuit around the ship, in search of a chink or crevice where she might pull it open and inspect its guts a little.

 

She can’t find a single one. It’s seamless, as if a single bead of mercury has been stretched into the shape of a starship, pointy nose and wings and all.

 

“ _Nightbloomer_. X-type Nubian yacht,” rumbles a deep voice, _his_ voice, startling her. “Reinforced hull with chromium plating. A gift, from the Naberrie side of the family.”

 

And then he is there by her side, so close. Close enough she can count the moles that dot his pale drawn face, close enough she can see the stubble roughening his jaw, close enough that can see it shifting, like he’s gnawing on his thoughts.

 

He’s dressed simply today, in a thin white cotton shirt, damp with sweat, and tight black trousers that bear crimson stripes down their sides, tucked into high leather boots and held up by a thick belt. He looks like old times. Better times. When he crosses his arms, it makes his biceps flex, their definition visible even beneath his clothes.

 

He shouldn’t look as good as he does. He shouldn’t smell as good as he does. None of this is fair.

 

A lock of hair, black shot through with silver, has tumbled over his scarred cheek; Rey is transfixed by it. She feels her own cheeks heat when his eyes glide over her simple tunic and leggings, her bare feet. Whether the blushing is a result of being caught snooping around his ship, of being caught staring at _him_ yet again, at the heated look in his eyes, or at being alone together… she couldn’t say. But it’s there, all the same.

 

Belatedly, the significance of the ship’s name registers with her. _Nightbloomer_ , he said.

 

She can think of only one origin for such a name, and it sets off another wild fever within her, to allow for that possibility.

 

In a wistful tone, she replies: “She’s incredible.”

 

He nods, tilting his head back and squinting against the sun’s glare reflected off the silver hull. One side of his mouth ticks up. “Were you looking for a way in?”

 

She gives a sheepish twitch of her shoulders.

 

“You always did like that sort of thing, didn’t you?” he muses.

 

It’s the most he’s spoken to her in almost a decade, and it sounds like it might be meant in jest, but Rey bristles at the implication.

 

“It was my livelihood,” she replies tartly.

 

The hint of a smile fades to a frown, and his posture stiffens.

 

“…I know that,” he states, all solemnity. He turns, his dark gaze pinning her where she stands. “Rey, I remember—”

 

“ _Rey!_ ” someone hollers.

 

They both flinch at the intrusion. When Rey turns in the direction of the voice, she spots Gozetta standing in the front doorway of the house, frantically waving her arms.

 

“Something’s wrong with the laundering unit and it’s spewing water and soap everywhere!” she shouts. “Get in here, quick, it’s flooding the damn house!”

 

Rey glances at him, biting back her disappointment. “I—I’ve got to—” she flounders, torn between what she _should_ do and what she _wants_ to do. “The—laundering unit—”

 

“Yeah.” He shrugs, then angles himself towards the ship. The profile of his face— strong nose and brow, full lips set in a stern line— is cast in shadow by the sunlight. “‘Course.” Kicking at the grass, he hunches in on himself, like he’s trying to disappear.

 

From the house, she hears Gozetta shriek, “Rey! Come on, let’s _go_!”

 

“I’ll just—I just—only—” she tries again.

 

A bitter laugh interrupts her. “It’s fine, Rey,” he husks out, shrugging again. “Don’t worry about it.”

 

With that, he gives her his back, the broad line of his shoulders rising and falling in a deep sigh before he marches away, out into the valley.

 

 _Don’t worry,_ he’d bid her. It had sounded like an order, and it’d been issued like one, but it’s not an order she can obey. Rey _does_ worry about it, as she sets herself to the task of fixing the laundering unit.

 

What might he have been about to say? What might she have said, in response? How can she not worry about it? She does. A lot. For the rest of the afternoon, the duration of which he remains out of sight, despite her thinly-disguised attempts to look for him once she’s repaired the machine.

 

But he stays away until dinnertime, and when he finally saunters into the house, he bears no visible shred of emotion over their aborted conversation, except that he seems to have renewed his vow of silence, and that he situates himself between Finn and Poe, making it so that Rey cannot catch him alone at any point for the remainder of the evening.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She tosses and turns that night. When she finally falls into a fitful sleep, it is only for for a handful of hours. And then she finds herself undeniably, irrecoverably awake, just as the filtered grey light of pre-dawn fills up her and Brixie’s shipping container bedroom. Gingerly, trying not to disturb her friend’s slumber, she slips from the sleeper and pads barefoot through the corrugated steel corridor towards the main room.

 

Caf, she’s decided, is the order of the day. If she cannot have sleep, then she will have true wakefulness.

 

Finn and Captain Solo are still passed out cold on the sofas at the far end of the main room, both breathing evenly and just barely visible under their mounds of blankets. So it is with painstaking care to keep quiet that she sets up Rose’s antiquated caf distiller and begins the brewing sequence.

 

And yet when she turns, perfectly content to stare off into space and daydream while she waits, she gasps, surprised by the sight of the Captain seated upright, covers tossed aside. His elbows are planted atop his knees and his hair is a dark tangle. Heaving a deep sigh, he rubs his hands over his cheeks.

 

She almost resents how good he looks to her, at that moment. How attractive he is, sleep-rumpled and relaxed, his big bare feet planted on the cold metal floor, muscled back visible through his thin sleep shirt.

 

He lifts a dark brow at her in puzzlement, one eye not yet open.

 

As though she’s been reprimanded, she whirls back towards the kitchen counter, just in time to turn off the caf distiller before it beeps. After filling two mugs— one loaded with sugar, just how he likes it— she tiptoes toward the front door, setting the sweetened one on the table closest to his sofa as she passes without meeting his eyes. Then she steps out into the fog-damp morning.

 

It’s not exactly pleasant, but she settles herself in one of the fibergrown chairs anyway, intent on watching the suns rise over the mist-shrouded valley, and feeling too raw to return inside, too on edge to navigate the saturnine temperament of the Captain.

 

And yet when, less than a minute later, he wordlessly drops down into the chair next to her, she makes no move to leave.

 

This should be peaceful, sitting together as Batuu’s suns crest the rim of the crater, sipping their caf.

 

(It should remind her of that brief sliver of happiness they shared, during those days when they woke up together and shared quiet, contented breakfasts in the main hold of the _Millennium Falcon_.)

 

It’s not. Rey is a mess; she jiggles one leg, fruitlessly trying to expend her nervous energy, as her mind supplies and dismisses various entry points for conversation. Should she comment on the weather? Ask him how he slept? Inquire as to how his mother is faring? Or Chewbacca’s whereabouts? Or how his father died? Or how he got that scar?

 

Or: does he miss her?

 

Or: does he dream of her like she does of him?

 

She steals a glimpse his way. He’s staring out into the fog abstractedly, looking pensive. His jaw tics, his free hand is clenched into a tight fist, and his posture is ramrod straight as ever.

 

He’s no more relaxed than she is.

 

“Yesterday,” she finally starts, her voice still gravelly with sleep, and immediately, he shoots to his feet.

 

“I’m sorry about that,” he bites out, shoving his hand into his hair, a nervous tell she remembers from years past. “I shouldn’t have—I’ll just…”

 

“Please,” she gasps. A moment ago she was panicked in one way, now her panic twists in a new direction. “Please stay. We can just sit here without speaking—I won’t say a word, I promise.”

 

“Rey…” he tries, then falters. “I…” again his words seem to die on his lips. He shakes his head. His free hand is still balled into a fist.

 

“Please,” she entreats, peering up at him. “Sit.”

 

With a sigh, he does.

 

Rey takes a nervous sip of her caf, and as if in recrimination of that choice, her stomach sours. Her nerves thrum. She can almost feel him, feel his anxiety, even as he takes his own sip, even as his eyes fix themselves once more on a distant, fog-shrouded point.

 

In profile like this, she can watch the way his throat bobs when he swallows thickly.

 

But… he doesn’t seem angry. Whatever this is between them, it doesn’t feel like resentment. They’re sitting together— maybe not in perfect harmony, maybe not in that love-drunk daze from their younger days— but they’re here.

 

The tears sneak up on her before she can will them back. She blinks, surprised to feel her cheeks becoming hot and wet. Flustered, she looks away, and attempts to surreptitiously wipe her face dry. She hears a harsh choking sound, and chances a look in his direction, only to discover he is watching her.

 

His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and brimming with tears of his own.

 

“Rey,” he chokes out, and nothing more. What more is there? He opens his hand and extends it towards her. Without speaking, she takes it.

 

He has crossed the divide, he has come for her, he is holding her hand. She feels safe, and cared for. They say nothing, and Rey knows that the time will come when much will need to be said, but two months ago she thought he was gone from her life forever, and that he would never forgive her, and now he is holding her hand. And that is not nothing.

 

He _has_ said something, and Rey has heard it.

 

There is nothing threadbare about this moment. Everything smells stronger, shines more brightly and with more color— once the fog burns off, after the suns have peeked over the mountaintops— and the chipper birdsong resounds within her, like a melody set to accompany the rat-a-tat rhythm of her heartbeat.

 

Rey pulls in a deep breath and holds it for as long as she can, then lets it out again. She looks down at his hand and hers, still clasped together. He doesn't look at her, but he squeezes, very gently.

 

Sounds begin to emanate from within the house, raspy morning voices and chairs being moved around. When Finn calls out to them to ask if they want more caf, the Captain drops her hand before rising and responding with an offer to make some breakfast for all of them.

 

He's dropped her hand, but he fixes her with something like a smile before he goes. It doesn’t reach his eyes. She lets him drop it, though she returns that smile with a weak attempt of her own.

 

He heads inside. Rey does not.

 

And what she is utterly amazed to realize is: she’s okay. He dropped her hand, but it’s okay. The feel of him holding it, like a phantom warmth, like a spectral embrace, remains.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Quiet and peaceful and nature and whatever is all well and good,” Gozetta grouses, after breakfast. They are all seated out on the grass in front of the house, enjoying the early morning warmth now that the suns have dried up the valley. “But I am bored _witless_. Isn’t there anything to _do_ on this damned island?”

 

“Tell us how you really feel, Goz!” exclaims Finn, with a shocked cough.

 

Rey cringes, hazarding a glance at the Captain; he is, unsurprisingly, scowling at her sister.

 

“We could always go back to Oga Garru’s cantina, see if we can’t find that Mister Armitage who was giving Rey the eye the other day…” Brixie says, sing-song. Rey looks down at her lap, her face aflame.

 

Gozetta clicks her tongue. “Ugh, so provincial. What else is there to do?”

 

“Goz!”

 

Poe gives an embarrassed shake of his head to Rose. Rey sneaks another peek at the Captain; he is still scowling, but now it seems to be directed not at her sister, but at his hands, which are balled into fists in his lap.

 

“She doesn’t mean that,” Poe adds, by way of apology, even as Gozetta huffs out a “Yes I do” under her breath. “She’s just—”

 

“It’s fine,” Rose cuts across him, with an unbothered laugh. “It’s slow out here. Trust me, I know it is. That’s why I chose this place. But…”

 

From beside her, Brixie’s shapely lips curve into a smirk, and she leans into Rose, one brow arched. “Buuut?”  

 

“Well…” an impish smirk of her own tugs at Rose’s lips. “There is _one_ thing we could do. Y’know, for fun.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

With a great metallic groan, Rose pulls the first of the ancient swoop bikes out of an unused stall in the ramshackle wooden barn.

 

“I have three of these Flare-S swoops,” she says, passing the bike to Finn and reaching for the next. “It takes a few hours to get where we’re headed, on foot. But only about fifteen minutes on these bad boys.”

 

“Maker, these are so old I wouldn’t be surprised if they belonged to Darth Vader back when he was still Anakin Skywalker,” Brixie jokes, before letting out a “Whoops!” Cringing, she turns to the Captain, who is inspecting the bike in Finn’s hands. “Sorry, Ben, that was—”

 

He just snorts to himself, without looking up. “It’s fine,” he says, and continues his inspection.

 

“The vendor threw ‘em in with the storage containers ‘cause they didn’t run anymore,” Rose goes on, in a lilting, amused, tone. “Joke’s on him, for not realizing he was dealing with a mechanic.”

 

Rey can see why someone would want to get rid of them. All three are rusted over and spindly, with mismatched parts. The central repulsor pods of each bike, which project out in front at the end of long stabilizer bars and control shafts, are so outdated Rey only vaguely recognizes them from archival schematics she’d flipped through years ago on old Imperial ships.

 

They look dangerous. And fast. Her stomach does a somersault in anticipation.

 

“I’m pretty sure we can fit three to a bike,” Poe says slowly, eying the seats. “If we put Tico, Brixie, and Rey on one—they’re all small enough. Then Goz and me, and Finn and Solo.”

 

If she feels a pang of disappointment not to be riding with _him_ , Rey makes sure not to let it show on her face. She plasters on a placid smile and nods.

 

“Should work,” Finn agrees. “But you’re riding passenger, Solo.”

 

(She doesn’t invite the sudden deluge of memories, but the sensations, phantom, like the feel of his big warm hand in hers from this morning, come back anyway: riding on her speeder together through the dunes of Jakku, his arms around her waist, hands flat against her empty, hungry belly, his face buried in the fabric of her cowl, right at her neck. How he curled himself around her, how it thrilled her and made her feel safe. Belonging, and lust, and affection, all ensnared in a knot so dense it will never be untangled.)

 

Rey wants him to be riding passenger on her swoop bike, wants more excuses to touch him, wants the privacy of the open air around them so that she can speak to him with the nerve of the things she could not say earlier, but she can think of no possible reason for that, and he’s not looking at her right now, anyway. So she says nothing, and gingerly perches herself on the very end of the bike seat, behind Brixie and Rose.

 

There are a few revs of the old repulsorlift engines, a few sputtering coughs of the turbothrusters, and a few taunting challenges about what happens to the last one there tossed back and forth, and then they're on their way.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Away, across the valley, they ride. In a loose formation, the bikes rattling threateningly as they are pushed to their limits, Brixie and Finn and Poe jockey for position at the head of the pack, crossing back and forth over rivers and high grass and past a herd of fathiers who simply stare at them, heads cocked and ears raised in alarm.

 

She notices, with a stolen glance to her right, that the Captain does not hold onto Finn as he once did with her. His hands rest on his thighs, his own heavy mass and tensed muscles seemingly keeping him fixed to the seat.

 

An errant notion presents itself to Rey, then refuses to be shaken off: if they’d rode together, she and him, would it have been the same?

 

Would he have held onto her, as he once did?

 

 

. . .

 

 

Under the high snowy peaks at the valley’s far end, there are places where millenia of melting runoff has eroded its sloping sides into sharp, steep walls of grey basalt.

 

Among those walls, there are also places where the melting snow becomes a series of descending rivers, which fall over these walls in thunderous, propulsive cascades of frothing white water. And beneath these cascades, there are places where the water has pooled, before it falls again.

 

Pool, then fall. Pool, then fall. Like stairs. Around the pools, boughs of trees hang lush and green-leafed; the bright damp moss on the massive boulders that line the pools is soft and springy. The air is cool and slightly wet from the mist that rises off the falls, and it is filled with their roaring song.

 

This is what greets the group, when they arrive at their destination, only about fifteen minutes after setting out.

 

“Well,” Gozetta says primly, taking in the scenery, “This will suffice, I suppose.”

 

“Now you can see why I told you to wear your bathing togs,” Rose replies, once again seemingly unruffled by Gozetta.

 

Rey looks down at her tunic and leggings, underneath which she is wearing black kelpcotton underwear. She has no swimming garments in her wardrobe, but at the first glimpse of the clear water placidly eddying around the largest pool, she resolves to strip down to her underwear if need be. She’ll be damned if she’s not going in.

 

When she looks up, without meaning to, it’s at the shirtless back of the Captain. He has turned from her, chatting nonchalantly with Poe while he makes quick work of his belt.

 

The moles that pepper his broad, muscled back are exactly as she remembered them. _He_ is as she’d remembered him: just as solid, just as strong. Just as pale. Still not sculpted, nor lithe, but powerful. Strapping, even at thirty-seven. Fine dark hair coats his forearms and when he half-turns, she can spy that fuzzy trail of hair that travels from his navel down beneath the waistline of his brief-style swimming togs.

 

(She remembers nuzzling that hair with her nose, his cock rooted in her throat; a guttural, helpless groan escaping from him as she…)

 

A livid blush storms her cheeks, and Rey spins away from the group, abashed, then throws herself into the task of unbuckling the leather belt at her waist.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The water is cold. Rocks make up the bed of the pool; they are slippery, covered in algae, but sharp-edged. The group must proceed gingerly, keeping one hand on the boulders as they inch out into the lazy swirling current.

 

Waiting to adjust to the frigid temperature, Rey stands in the shallows and studies her underwear-clad body; it’s not in so sorry a state as she was expecting. She’s filled out a bit, during her time on Chandrila. Her bones are less visible now, her muscles no longer the striated, stringy cords that have always made her feel like a creature of the desert. Her hips have a slight flare to them, the swell of her breasts is more visible under the simple kelpcotton bralette that keeps them in place. A poke to her stomach leaves her pleased; her index finger finds some softness to push against.

 

She feels sort of… lush. Like this place. Supple. Which is odd, she thinks, considering her mileage, and how far she feels from young, most days.

 

“Checking yourself out, Rey?” teases Rose, from the pool. Rey glances up to see that almost everyone is treading water out near the falls, submerged to their shoulders, their hair wet, dark, and plastered to their heads. She’s the only one still clinging to a boulder, shivering at the sensation of frigid water lapping at her shins.

 

“Hey, not judging, you look hot! But you really should come on in. The water’s fine!” Rose smiles at her, then yawps when Brixie turns and splashes a handful of water directly into her face. “Oh, you’re gonna pay for that, you brat!” she hollers, laughing, before swimming off in Brixie’s direction.

 

Still, Rey hesitates in the shallows. She scans the pool, checking that everyone is alright. Gozetta is, perhaps surprisingly, the strongest swimmer of them all, and has already made her way under the falls. She can just make out the shape of her sister, sitting on the rocks that lie hidden behind the veil of falling water. Poe sits beside her. Are their faces touching? Are they kissing?

 

An amazed laugh bubbles up, and she hides it in her hand. Finn, she discovers when she continues her survey, has been pulled into some sort of splashing standoff with Brixie and Rose, out in the center of the pool.

 

And the Captain is still treading water, only a meter or so away. He stares unblinkingly at Rey.

 

His nostrils flare when their eyes meet, then his gaze skitters away. Is he abashed, like she has been so often in days prior, to have been caught staring?

 

“It’s safe,” he says, in that low, quiet way of his. Low enough that only she can hear.

 

“I know that,” she bites back, a defensive reflex.

 

“Okay.”

 

His voice is tinged with disbelief, and it provokes a frustrated huff from her.

 

“It’s just—cold.”

 

“Not so cold as Rhinnal,” he says, still calm, still low.

 

Their eyes lock, and there’s something like amusement glinting there, in his expression. His thick arms wave to and fro just below the surface; his shoulders bob up, muscles bunched, and then disappear again.

 

His ears stick out between strands of dark damp hair.

 

“No.” She gives a slight, bemused shake of her head. “Not so cold as that.”

 

“You—” he breaks off, pulling in a deep breath and turning his head to glance over at their friends. No one is paying them any mind. He turns back to her. “You want some help?”

 

Chagrined, she grits out, “No! I can—I’m perfectly capable of swimming.”

 

He at least has the grace to look ashamed. “I’m—I know. I’m… sorry. I didn’t mean—”

 

In defiance of his concern, she lets go of the boulder, and takes two shaky steps forward. The rocks fall away quickly, and after taking a few more steps, she’s submerged almost as deeply as the Captain. With a light kick, she pushes off, now out in water too deep for standing.

 

He watches, hovering, like he’s ready to shoot forward and grab her at a moment’s notice.

 

“Okay?” he asks, drawing closer.

 

“Fine!”

 

She’s panting slightly from the effort of keeping herself afloat; scrabbling against nothing, her style of swimming could be described somewhere between flailing and floundering.

 

“Just kick your legs—”

 

“I said I’m fine!” she snaps. “I know how to swim!”

 

“I wouldn’t call what you’re doing _swimming_ ,” drawls Gozetta, who has emerged with Poe from behind the waterfall. Both her sister’s and her brother-in-law’s lips are bright, almost bruised, as though they’ve been chewed on, and their faces are flushed.

 

“Oh hush, she’s doing great,” Brixie chimes in. “It doesn’t have to look pretty, it just has to keep her head above water!”

 

Rey ignores them both. She resolves to do one clumsy lap around the pool’s edge, before returning to the safety and dignity of the rocks. She even hesitantly dips her head beneath the rushing water for a moment, much to the amusement of Gozetta and the others. Finn and Poe cheer for her as she paddles along, the two of them clapping and whistling, and Brixie sidles up alongside Rey, offering quiet words of encouragement.

 

When she makes it back to her starting point, she lurches up onto the boulder she’d clung to earlier, and sends a smug smirk in _his_ direction before taking a bow to the others, accepting their round of applause.

 

He looks away, then sinks below the water. Maybe he’s trying to hide his reaction, but Rey catches sight of it anyway when he reappears, dripping and shiny-wet; even with his face half-turned away from her, she can spy the flush making its way up from the back of his neck to the tip of his ear, and the easy smile dimpling his scarred cheek.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They spend hours on those warm boulders, lounging like sun-baked lizards in the bright afternoon.

 

“I think the thing that gets me,” Rose says to her, in an aside not meant to be heard by the others over the roar of the falls, “is that I wish I could ask for advice, sometimes. Like I used to.”

 

“From your sister?” asks Rey, her voice an equally low-pitched murmur.

 

“Or my parents.” Rose’s mouth twists a bit, a pained smile she directs at Rey.

 

“Yes, I—I understand that wish.”

 

Rose nods pensively. “I guess you do,” she reflects, “Your mother…?”

 

“She wasn’t in my life for very long, all told.” Rey shrugs, artfully careless. “A handful of years I don’t remember well, when I was very young. And a few months, once my family returned. That was all the time we had.”

 

“Don’t you ever feel… I don’t know, angry with them?”

 

Rey looks around, and sees that the others are occupied in conversation of their own, except for the Captain. He’s lying on his back not far from Rey and Rose. Though one leg is propped up, his foot flat on the warm rock and his knee bent in the air, his eyes are closed. He appears to be asleep.

 

“Not with Gozetta or Verla. They were so young when they left—it wasn’t their decision.”

 

“Your parents?”

 

For a long time, Rey does not reply. The words— and the feelings behind them— are hard to face in the bald light of day, especially on an afternoon so cheerful and relaxed as this one. She listens to the others’ idle chit-chat, some sort of teasing debate about starfighter maneuvers.

 

“…Yes,” she admits, at last. “I wasn’t, at first. For a long time, I was just… so happy, to have a family again. I was grateful. But lately, I’ve…”

 

Rose takes her hand when she trails off, voice breaking up into nothingness. The support, the warm sympathy in her new friend’s eyes, gives her what she needs to blink back her tears, push past the ache in her throat, and carry on.

 

“I’ve found myself becoming very angry with them. And with… the Abednedo who sort of—served as my guardian in their stead. She—she was like my mother, and sometimes I think—”

 

“It’s okay,” Rose says, picking up on Rey’s distress. “We don’t have to talk about it, if you’re not ready.”

 

“I want to be ready,” she croaks, then pauses at the sound of a sharp, angry inhalation. When she peeks over at their friends, they’re still chatting. The Captain still lies supine off to one side, eyes closed. Except, now his nostrils are flared, and his jaw is clenched tight.

 

He is listening. She recognizes the tension in his long, heavy limbs, the heavy way he swallows. His eyes are closed, but he is attuned to her.

 

“I have regrets,” she admits, raising her voice a hair. “I regret choices I’ve made, on Mashra’s advice—that was my guardian—which, I don’t know, I thought was doing the right thing at the time. Those choices brought me to my family, and for that I suppose I must be grateful, but what I lost…”

 

Rose quirks an eyebrow at the change in volume, then tracks Rey’s stolen glance over to its target, the Captain. Suddenly, she smiles.

 

“We’re all guilty of making the wrong choice under duress,” she remarks. “You can’t spend the rest of your life torturing yourself with what-if’s.”

 

“Can’t I?” asks Rey, with a sad laugh— attempting a detached air. But it doesn’t work, she just sounds depressed.

 

“Well look, this is the pot preaching to the kettle, because for years, I’ve gone to sleep every kriffing night asking myself, ‘What if I had been the pilot in the _Cobalt Hammer_ with Paige? I know how to fly, sometimes she brought me along with her. Maybe I could’ve insisted on doing that run with her. Maybe I _should’ve_. Could I have kept her alive, if I’d been there?’”

 

Rey shakes her head. “You can’t—”

 

“You’re damned right I can’t!” Rose insists, cutting across her. “I can’t and I shouldn't. I still do, but I know I shouldn’t. And neither should you.” She sighs. “We both have to quit it with that.”

 

A long, thoughtful moment passes between them, filled with only the clamor of the falls and their friends’ laughter. Rey breathes in the air, drenched with the cool, crisp scents of wet rock and moss.

 

She chances another look in his direction, and finds that he has opened his eyes. He’s staring up at the cloudless sky. Waiting.

 

“Maybe you’re right,” she says, loud enough that she knows he’ll hear it.

 

His eyes slip closed, and he sighs. Rose’s expression gentles, and she says something in response that Rey does not hear; she cannot look away from the Captain, whose face is now free of tension, whose limbs are once more loosely sprawled.

 

Without needing to ask, she _knows_. He has heard her, too.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Oh yeah?” shouts Brixie to Poe, some time later, “Well, watch this!”

 

Poe has been entertaining them with increasingly theatrical dives off of a boulder that juts out over the water on one side of the pool, while they sip on bottles of Batuu brew and pass around a bag of cracknuts.

 

Rey turns to watch as Brixie climbs up out of the water onto the jagged rocks that frame both sides of the falls. She clambers up about a meter or so before turning back and, upon discerning that she has everyone’s attention, unceremoniously hurls herself into the water. There is a great splash, and then all goes still.

 

Their chatter dies, forgotten, all of them waiting for her head to pop up out of the water. When it finally does— Brixie tossing her hair back as she lets out a triumphant whoop— Rey releases a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

 

“Bravo!” Rose calls out, “But you really need to be careful! There’s a ton of sharp rocks on the bottom—”

 

Brixie interrupts. “Are you kidding? I’m doing that again!”

 

“Brixe, please be careful!” warns Rey, her voice strained, but Brixie is already swimming back towards the falls.

 

“Yeah, c’mon kiddo, don’t do anything stupid,” Poe says, from across the pool.

 

She scoffs as she lifts herself up onto the lowest rock.

 

“Brixie,” is all the Captain says, but the warning in his tone is unmistakable.

 

“What?” she shouts back. “You think I can’t do it? I’m jumping again Ben Solo—my mind’s made up!”

 

“I believe you, but you should be—”

 

“Hey, if Rey can swim around this pond, I think I—who grew up next to an ocean, by the way—can handle a little jump!” She continues climbing, but once she reaches the rock from which she jumped last time, she does not stop.

 

“That’s high enough!” Poe snaps.

 

She laughs, clambering up onto the next rock, and then the one above that. “Says you!”

 

“Brixie, don’t jump from there!” Rey calls, agitated, her pulse beginning to race. “It’s too high!”

 

“Brixie!” shouts the Captain, but her back is turned to them, and she seems to be ignoring their warnings. “Brixie, be careful! Come down—”

 

“Oh, re _lax_ , you guys! This is nothing!”

 

 _“Brixie!”_ Gozetta this time— even her sister has sat up straight now, face pinched with worry. “Brixie, that’s too high!”

 

“You’re just jealous, Goz!” With that she turns, a solid four meters above the water. “Alright everybody, now watch this!”

 

“Brixie, _no_!” the Captain bellows, but it’s too late.

 

She’s already leapt.

 

For one terrible moment that spans several eternities, they all watch in helpless horror as she plunges down towards the pool. It becomes obvious almost immediately— almost from the moment her feet leave the rock— that she hasn’t jumped out far enough. She has a split second of freefall before Brixie herself realizes it as well, and her expression contorts from joy to terror. But it’s too late to do anything.

 

And sure enough, there is a sickening thud when she lands feet first in the shallows, where the water is barely deep enough to reach her knees. Her legs buckle on impact, then another dull thud sounds out when the back of her head meets rock, before she ricochets forward into the water.

 

Blood, stark red and diffused, begins to flow out into the pool. No one moves. It is as if they cannot believe what has happened, cannot quite make sense of the sight of Brixie’s unmoving body floating prostrate, face-down. Her right leg is bent at an unnatural angle, her face hidden by dark blood-matted curls.

 

Gozetta’s piercing scream shatters the spell, and all at once, they jump to action.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Oh god, she’s dead!” Gozetta is moaning, by the time the Captain reaches Brixie. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Oh kriff, oh stars—she’s kriffing dead!”

 

“Gozetta! Get a grip!” Rey spits back at her, paddling desperately to keep up with his longer strokes.

 

“What do we do?” cries Rose. She’s leaping from rock to rock, making her way around the pool.

 

“Get her face out of the water,” Rey orders. Without speaking, the Captain grabs Brixie by the shoulders and does as she’s said.

 

 _“Careful!”_ Poe, face drained of color, swims up behind her. “Be careful with her!”

 

“I am!” snaps the Captain.

 

“Everyone stay calm!” Rey barks. Then, having finally caught up with the Captain, she carefully turns Brixie’s head in an attempt to inspect her wound. It’s difficult to discern through her hair how bad the fracture is, but it’s obvious there is one.

 

“Shara Bey is going to _kill_ me!” wails Gozetta.

 

“Enough, Gozetta!”

 

It’s Finn who scolds her this time, his rough bark of an order silencing her immediately. He leans forward on his knees, peering over from his position on the rocks beside Rose.

 

With Brixie’s unmoving body secured in his arms, the Captain begins to swim back towards the boulders closest to their bikes. Rey follows him, and upon noticing her sister’s panicked sobbing, she directs:

 

“Somebody get Goz out of here!”

 

 _“Hey!”_ Gozetta bleats through her tears, offended.

 

“We’re gonna need a doctor,” Finn says, as he and Rose watch the Captain swim. He darts back around the pool to assist him when he reaches the other side, carefully taking Brixie from his arms so the Captain can climb out of the water. Poe helps him set her down on a wide, flat boulder nearby.

 

“Ugh, I don’t have a medidroid out here,” laments Rose. “Maybe at the Outpost?”

 

“The vet droid!” Rey mutters to herself, then turns to Rose. “Can’t James look at her?”

 

“He’ll do,” she agrees.

 

The Captain’s head snaps up. “I’ll get him!”

 

“No, send Rose and Finn… and Gozetta,” Rey interjects. “They’ll know where to find him—won’t you?”

 

A muffled “Yes!” and “We’re on it!” is all she hears, for they’ve already turned— Rose clutching Gozetta’s bicep to drag her along, still wailing— and rushed off towards the parked swoop bikes.

 

“Now what?” huffs Poe. He leans in to study his sister’s serene face. “Maker, what am I going to tell my parents?”

 

“Don’t panic, Dameron, she’ll be alright,” the Captain says, in a calm commanding tone. “She’s still breathing.”

 

“Right. Now, we—” At a loss, Rey looks around in search of ideas. “Uh, let’s get her head elevated!” She reaches for Poe’s discarded shirt, then hands it to him. “Put that on the wound, and lift her head up onto your lap.”

 

Poe does so, with shaking hands. The Captain, after prodding Brixie’s legs then wincing at whatever he finds, nods to himself, and leans back on his haunches.

 

“There’s something off in her right ankle. Broken, maybe.” He peers up at Rey, squinting against the late afternoon sun.

 

“Okay,” she says, and pulls in a deep breath. “Okay, now we know. But we’re just going to leave it alone, for the time being. We’re just—just going to stay here, and wait for James.” She directs a meaningful look Poe’s way.

 

“Calmly,” she adds, for good measure.

 

He gives an unsteady nod.

 

 

. . .

 

 

About a half hour later, Finn’s diplomatic shuttle sets down in a clearing not far from the falls.

 

Rose and Finn rush out, J8-MS in tow, and Gozetta brings up the rear. It’s clear that J8-MS has already been apprised of the situation by the medpac he carries, and as he rolls up onto the boulder where Rey, Poe, and the Captain are seated, Rey shuffles out of the way to make room for him.

 

In anxious silence, they all watch the vet droid get to work. He does some preliminary visual assessments, then cracks open his medpac to pull out a medisensor, which he uses to do a scan of Brixie’s chest and head. After, he reaches for a tool Rey recognizes— from Weir’s fall, what feels like a lifetime ago— to be an encephaloscanner. A few scans are done of Brixie’s skull, and in short order, with the help of Poe, Brixie is rolled onto her stomach, at which point the droid begins to administer micro-sutures to the still sluggishly-bleeding gash in her scalp. Once finished, he dabs a salve on the stitched together flesh, then places a thin bacta patch over the entire wound.

 

Needle and thread passed off to Rose, who silently clutches at them like an anchor— all of them still watching, still waiting— the droid picks up the medisensor once more, and performs an inspection of her ankles and feet.

 

At last finished, he turns to Rose. In binary, he beeps and trills: _“Broken ankle. Bacta tank or bactade dosage, twenty-five milliliters, required. Antishock dosage, two-thousand milligrams, necessary to counteract concussive symptoms. Patient requires one week of bed rest for recuperative purposes.”_

 

Rose nods curtly, her mouth settled in a grim, thin frown. “Bed rest we can do. Bacta tank—that’s going to be tougher. Antishock too—I’m almost certain we don't have that here on the island.”

 

“As far as I know, there isn’t a medcenter on Batuu,” Finn says regretfully. “Though there should be. And I can’t think of anybody who owns a bacta tank. But… there’s a pharmacy and some spice dens, in Smugglers’ Alley.”

 

“Let’s get her back to the house first, and then we can figure out the rest,” Rey suggests.

 

“Good plan,” says Poe. “Solo, Finn—help me get her into the shuttle?”

 

And just like that, their visit to the waterfalls is officially over.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Should I… call my parents?” Poe wonders rhetorically, grimacing, once they’ve settled Brixie on a sofa in Rose’s home.

 

Rey wordlessly gestures her approval of that idea, and Poe heads back outside, comlink in hand, just as the Captain announces, “ _Nightbloomer_ is the fastest ship we have right now. I’ll go to the Outpost, track down the bactade and antishock.”

 

“I’ll come with you. Smugglers’ Alley can be tricky to navigate if you haven’t been there before,” Rose mutters. She brushes the backs of her fingers over Brixie’s cheek, then shakes herself, pulling in a deep breath. “Let’s go?”

 

He nods. Rose disappears into her bedroom, and the Captain turns to Rey. “You’ll—stay? Watch over her?”

 

“Of course,” she whispers.

 

“Good,” he huffs. “That’s—good.”

 

It seems like it takes a great deal of effort for him to look at Brixie, something he hasn’t done since he checked her ankle. And the expression that washes over his face when he does— guilt, horror, shame, castigation— makes Rey want to fling her arms around him, and offer her reassurances.

 

“I—” he begins, then darts his eyes towards Rey. “I can’t—”

 

“It’s okay,” she says, just as a comlink on the kitchen table lights up and begins beeping. Finn crosses the room to pick it up, and at the name flashing on its display, utters a few choice curses under his breath.

 

“I need to take this,” he tells them, a sharp edge to his voice. “It’s your mother, Solo. Everyone gonna be okay for a few minutes?”

 

“We’re fine,” she assures Finn, just as Rose re-emerges from her bedroom, dressed in an old jumpsuit.

 

“Ready, Tico?” asks the Captain, all business now. She nods. “Alright, let’s roll out.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Is she going to die?” Gozetta asks Rey in a childlike whimper, once they are alone in the room with Brixie.

 

“No,” answers Rey. “Once we have the meds we need, she’ll be fine.”

 

“I’m not good under pressure.” Gozetta sniffs, ego bruised from her earlier histrionics.

 

“We know that, Goz. And we love you anyway,” she replies gently. She takes Goz’s hand in hers.

 

“You do?”

 

She smiles. “Of course we do.”

 

Just then, Finn reappears in the main room. Gozetta and Rey watch as he drops down into one of the lounger chairs, exhaustion evident on his face. He lets out a heavy sigh.

 

Tentatively, she asks, “Everything… okay?”

 

He shakes his head. “Senator Organa is putting together an emergency council, just for a few trusted individuals. I gotta…” He groans, frustrated. “I have to leave, today. As soon as possible, really.”

 

“What’s going on?” Gozetta frowns at him.

 

“Wish I could say—Leia kept the details sparse, she’s worried about our communications getting intercepted. But from her tone… well, if she’s as worried as she sounds, it’s probably serious.”

 

“Kriff,” mutters Rey.

 

Again, he groans wearily. “She’s also requested that Commander Dameron and Captain Solo be present. Looks like as soon as Solo’s back from the Outpost, our little vacation is getting cut short.”

 

Gozetta pouts. “Double kriff.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

By the time Rose and the Captain return with the antishock and bactade, Finn, Poe, and Gozetta have just about finished packing up their belongings. It doesn’t take the Captain long to do the same, once they inform him of the situation. Some discussion follows about who will stay and who will leave.

 

“Rey should stay,” says the Captain, without a second thought. “She can see Brixie through this, then help her make the trip back to Chandrila.”

 

“What? No! I should stay as well!” is Gozetta’s indignant assertion. “After all, _I’m_ her sister!” She huffs. “ _And_ a mother—I know how to nurse someone back to health, more than Rey.”

 

The Captains levels an unimpressed glower at her sister. Then he repeats, “Rey should stay.”

 

Rey has to bury her chuckle at the memory of Gozetta’s bedside manner; she addresses Gozetta in her calmest, mildest manner, saying: “Goz, don’t you think Little Poe and Weir are missing you?” and then, when Gozetta seems unmoved, she adds, “Remember how difficult Weir’s injuries were for you? It might be better if I stayed, don't you think?”

 

And although Gozetta stomps her foot and scoffs and rambles on about how underappreciated she is, in the end, she agrees with Rey, and concedes to going with Poe.

 

“I’ll leave _Nightbloomer_ and my astromech here with you,” says the Captain to Rey, after that has been settled. “You can fly it, can’t you? When Brixie is well enough to travel?”

 

Nodding, she issues a soft, “Thank you.”

 

Their eyes meet, and it seems to Rey that there is more he wants to say— his mouth opens then shuts in preparation— but he glances around the room at everyone embracing and exchanging hasty goodbyes, and instead merely nods, then picks up his bag.

 

While he’s carrying it out to Finn’s shuttle, Rey sees her sister and Poe off.

 

“Chandrila will be quite dull without you,” Gozetta tells her, in an undertone, as they walk through the grass towards the Damerons’ freighter. “So please don’t stay away too long. For—the boys’ sake. They’ll… miss you. Terribly.”

 

Rey grins. “Right. For the boys.”

 

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Gozetta admits, “… And for me.”

 

Before Gozetta can protest, Rey pulls her into a hug. “I love you,” she tells her sister. “Safe journey.”

 

After a beat, she feels Gozetta’s arms come up around her. “… I love you too,” she says, hushed, like she’s sharing confidential information.

 

Rey lets her go, giving a sloppy salute to Poe, who has already seated himself in the cockpit. Gozetta ascends the boarding ramp then turns, waving to Rey until it is raised and she has disappeared from view. The ion engine blazes brilliant blue, _Pathfinder_ raises up, and a second later, they are gone.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Brixie remains laid out on the sofa, unconscious, when Rey returns inside. She settles herself next to Rose, who is sitting vigil by Brixie’s side, and watches as Finn passes in and out of the house with the last armfuls of luggage and supplies.

 

All of a sudden, it occurs to Rey: this might be her last and only chance to speak privately with the Captain, for some time.

 

She waits, inhaling and exhaling five deep breaths. Then she rises to her feet from her crouch beside Rose, murmurs some flimsy excuse, and makes towards the front door. Rose smirks and bows her head, a knowing nod, right before Rey darts outside.

 

The boarding ramp of Finn’s diplomatic shuttle is down, and the Captain is nowhere in sight. Without hesitation, she climbs up into the ship, and strides in what she supposes must be the direction of the cockpit. When she reaches it, she finds the Captain seated at the controls, programming coordinates into the navicomputer. Finn’s astromech— a squat round BB unit— warbles out a diagnostic, and after bemusedly acknowledging it, he issues an order for it to go check on the warp vortex stabilizer. As it rolls past her, Rey clears her throat.

 

He whirls around in the pilot’s seat, startled by her presence.

 

“Rey,” he gasps. “I’m, uh…” his throat bobs, “preparing us for flight.”

 

“I see that,” she says, then takes a step closer.

 

From aftward in the shuttle, she hears Finn’s footfalls as he ascends the ramp, then a loud ‘clang’ as he deposits what sounds to be a heavy crate in the main hold.

 

“Solo?” he calls out. “We almost ready?”

 

“Just about,” the Captain hollers back.

 

“Good. I’m just gonna say goodbye to Rose, then we need to jet.”

 

“Copy that.”

 

At the thought of him leaving, _again_ , a crack forms in Rey’s chest. Misery and doubt and longing pours in, filling up her lungs. Clogging her airway, suffocating her.

 

He’s leaving her, again.

 

“Ben,” she says, in a small plaintive voice. She hasn’t said that name in eight years. It rasps strangely in her throat, and leaves her mouth sere as the Jakku desert. He blinks at the sound of it.

 

“Ben, I—”

 

“I know—” he starts, then falters at the realization he’s spoken over her.

 

“Yes?” she prompts, taking another step into the cockpit. Closer to him. She could reach out and muss his hair, if she wanted to.

 

He swallows. “I know Brixie’s in good hands, with you. And Rose.”

 

“She is, I—I promise. She’ll be fine, in a day or two.” She does her best attempt at a reassuring smile, but she can feel it wobbling.

 

His gaze ticks down, taking in that wobble, and he rakes his hand through his hair, a frenzied motion. When his eyes seek hers out again, they are wide and wild. Panicked.

 

“Did I do this, Rey?” he asks her, beseeching. “Was it my fault? She’s… a sweet girl. Young, maybe. Impressionable. Headstrong, when she decides on something. Would she have jumped, if I hadn’t… if we weren’t…”

 

“I… I don’t know. I don’t know if we can know the answer to that,” she answers.

 

“I didn’t—I never meant—it wasn’t—”  he growls.

 

“Solo, you ready?” Finn’s voice, closer now— right behind her. Rey spins, offering him her wobbly smile. He shrugs apologetically. When she turns back to the Captain, something like a look of desperation passes between them.

 

Finn’s sigh rings out in the heavy, weighted silence. “Look, I’m really sorry to interrupt guys, but it’s going to take us _days_ to get to Hosnian Prime, and we needed to be there… yesterday. So whatever you have to say or do, it just has to wait ‘til later, okay?”

 

“Okay,” Rey breathes, not taking her eyes off the Captain, who stares back at her, looking wrecked.

 

Finn waits a beat, then turns and tromps off in the direction of the BB unit.

 

“… Ben,” she tries one last time, her voice breaking on the name.

 

But she can’t do it, she can’t seem to speak. Her eyes are welling with tears, her breathing hitched and difficult. She wants to be _selfish_ , just this once; she wants to say damn Senator Organa and her secret meeting, damn her responsibility to her sister-in-law.

 

 _Just stay,_ she wants to beg, _stay, please, this time stay, stay with me, let’s start again—_

 

He lets his eyes sink down to the controls, giving an almost imperceptible shake of his head and Rey knows… the moment has passed.

 

“Have a safe journey,” she manages to get out, barely audible.

 

“Thank you,” he replies, just as muted, without looking at her.

 

She pivots on her heel and hurries back through the ship, down the ramp, onto the grass— all the while feeling angry and dizzy and sick with hunger for him all over again. She bids a brief goodbye to Finn with a hug and a promise to talk soon, then hurries back into the house, keeping her back to the windows as she passes into the kitchen with the intention of preparing some tea.

 

Even when she hears the shuttle rise up, hears its ion engine roar, hears Finn and _him_ zoom off into the ether, she cannot make herself look outside. This probably isn’t the end, she knows that. They’ll meet again… maybe. This is not Ben storming off, heartsick and disgusted; this is not Rey falling apart at the seams, left behind again with only her regret to keep her company.

 

But she sucks in a ragged breath anyway, and does not avert her gaze from the kettle.

 

She cannot watch him leave her. Not after this morning. Not after today. Not after this _week_.

 

Not now.

 

Not ever again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, so _close_ and yet so _far_! Some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa style: the [Naberrie family](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Naberrie_family)
> 
> There's a whole [series](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BB-series_astromech_droid) of BB droids out there. Think of the possibilities! [And yes, I do ship [CB-23](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/CB-23) and [BB-9E](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BB-9E). Enemies 2 Lovers 4 Life!]
> 
> Transport! What is the [_Raddus_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Raddus_\(MC85_Star_Cruiser\)) [an [MC85 Star Cruiser](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/MC85_Star_Cruiser)], the [_Cobalt Hammer_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cobalt_Hammer) [an [MG-100 StarFortress SF-17](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/MG-100_StarFortress_SF-17)], a [Nubian yacht](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/H-type_Nubian_yacht/Legends), and a [Flare-S swoop](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Flare-S_swoop)?
> 
> What's a [turbothruster](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Turbothruster)?
> 
> Is it already painfully obvious to everyone what a [laundering unit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Laundering_unit) and [caf distiller](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Caf_distiller) are? [Probably yes. Follow up question: will that stop me from including links to their two-sentence Wookieepedia pages? Nope!]
> 
> What is [fiber-grown furniture](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fiber-grown_furniture)?
> 
> What are [bathing togs](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bathing_togs)? [Exactly what they sound like. However, I think this is perhaps my one and only chance to share a fun fact with you: [there are bathing suits for Hutts](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/8/8d/Paradise_%28cantina%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091227001807). You're welcome!]
> 
> What's a [medpac](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Medpac) and [salve](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Salve)?
> 
> What is... [toast](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Toast)? 😏 Okay but more seriously, would you eat some [cracknuts](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cracknut) with an icy cold Batuu Brew? I would! Lastly, what is [spice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Spice)?
> 
> What's [binary aka droidspeak](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Binary)?
> 
> Okay, I think that's all from me for this chapter. Thank you for reading! ❤


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But the remembrance of the appeal remained a pleasure to her, as a proof of friendship, and of deference for her judgement, a great pleasure; and when it became a sort of parting proof, its value did not lessen.”
> 
> “[Rey] wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits. She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.”
> 
> —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, many many thanks to Mixy for her excellent beta-ing and to Trixie, for her invaluable suggestions on this chapter! And to Becca, who had the excessively talented [Selina](https://twitter.com/selunchen) draw a tender moment between Ben and Rey during the early days of their romance, which you can see [here](https://twitter.com/torra_doza/status/1106313281038245889)!💓

**42 ABY.**

 

Under a canopy of leaf-dotted uneti tree branches, in a liminal light that belongs to neither night nor day, Rey sits astride _his_ lap, and languidly, he whispers to her, “Stay. Let me stay.”

 

In response, she rocks closer to him, luxuriating in the feel of satiny soft skin, scarred and downy with hair in some places, stretched over long limbs knotted with burls of muscle. His body, a resting place for hers.

 

Chandrila’s moons are doing a slow dance together, overhead.

 

She can hear the ocean waves. Whoosh, swish, shurr.

 

But… that’s not right. She’s sat under this tree before, and she knows she could never really hear the ocean like that, not from this distance.

 

“Not in here,” she mumbles, seeing the dream for what it is. Still, she is hypnotized by the jut of his full lower lip, and the dark prickly stubble growing beneath it.

 

His hands, wide and warm, trace a path up and down her bare back, to either side of her spine. If she were a winged creature, the path would be the roots of her wings.

 

She feels weightless, airborne. She might be winged, for how it feels as though they are flying together.

 

Is that him, hard and hot and prodding against her naked belly? She uses his knees as leverage to push herself just a bit higher up his thighs, a loth-cat slinking towards her target.

 

“Not in here,” he echoes. “I want it out there.”

 

“Me too.”

 

She drapes herself over his body, both of them resting against the tree trunk. The moonlight is rose and gold, and everything is slightly soft, slightly blurred around the edges. This too, the feeling of their bodies together, is blurred. Unreal.

 

Not enough.

 

She says as much, and he grunts his agreement.

 

“You still trust me,” she sighs into his ear, a secret within this secret place. Even her sigh is rose-gold, blooming relief and gilded adoration.

 

“More than anyone,” is the soft yearning response she hears, right before she awakens.

 

She blinks, clutching onto the dream for a few moments longer than usual, but eventually it dissipates in the muted morning light of Rose’s spare bedroom, same as all the others.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“How are you feeling today?” Rey gently queries, when she enters the main room to find Brixie gingerly pushing herself up to a seated position on the sofa, the same on which she was deposited yesterday.

 

“Stupid,” Brixie answers, her voice a withered croak from sleep. She doesn’t meet Rey’s eyes, glaring instead at the vase of drooping delia pavorum blossoms on the table before her. After clearing her throat, she adds, “And embarrassed. And achy.”

 

Rey winces. “I’m afraid I can’t help with the first two.” She draws near to the sofa and lays a hand on Brixie’s shoulder. “For what it’s worth, we’ve—all done foolish things before. You’re only Human.”

 

“A stupid Human,” Brixie retorts.

 

“How about some toast and tea, to go with your meds?” suggests Rey. “The achy situation, at least, we can fix.”

 

Brixie dips her head in a sullen nod, and says nothing.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, when Rose has arisen, and the three of them are lolling around on the sofas, chatting, Brixie repeats those sentiments. “I just feel… like an idiot. I was trying…” she trails off, casting an apprehensive glance in Rose’s direction. “Maker, I don't even know what I was trying to do.”

 

Rey munches on her toast, then sips at her coffee, unsure what she can offer in the way of wisdom or assurances; they all know that Brixie’s choice to jump was foolish, Brixie included. She wonders: would she have done the same, for the Captain, back when he was still Ben, _her_ Ben? She ponders it, as long minutes of silent contemplation pass. Maybe she would have. Maybe she was even ready to risk more for him— ready to give up the thing that was most important to her.

 

For one moment, she is tempted to tell Brixie of her own foolish youthful choices, but something stays her tongue. Instead, she glances out the window, where dark clouds are gathering low in the sky, making the bowl of the valley feel as though a lid has been placed atop it. Then she lets out a heavy, tired sigh.

 

“When we were still back on Hays Minor,” Rose begins, her tone thoughtful, “I got into speedercraft. Building, modding, repairing. I told you, didn’t I Brixie? About that old FC-20?”

 

Brixie nods slowly; she opens her mouth then shuts it, opting to wait for Rose to elaborate.

 

“It was a lot of trial and error, getting it to run. And when I did get it to run, you know what happened?”

 

A pause, the hush of both women’s anticipation making the air heavy. Rose lets out a rueful laugh.

 

“I called for Paige to come see, because I wanted to impress her—so badly. And she was always doing daring stuff like that, so I thought it would. I started up the FC-20—its repulsorlift purred like a Kushiban by the way, ran like a dream—then I got in… and immediately crashed it. I was lucky, to be honest. Thrown from the speeder, landed in the dirt. Got some bruises and cuts, but nothing serious. No permanent damage—except maybe to my pride.”

 

Looking grateful, Brixie nods. “I know something about that,” she quips.

 

But Rose isn’t finished. “After that, I said to myself: lesson learned. No operating a transport unless you know what you’re getting yourself into. And I started doing just that. It was… so much reading. Hours and hours of reading. You know how they put Paige and me on the _Raddus_ , when they rescued us from…” she swallows thickly, faltering for a second, “from the First Order?”

 

“Uh-huh,” answers Brixie, softly.

 

“I started reading everything I could get my hands on—maintenance logs, shipyard datasheets, some of which were in Mon Cal by the way, whatever I could find on the HoloNet about the MC85 Star Cruiser—and when I felt ready, I reported for duty down in the maintenance bay. There was this guy, Laszlo, who used to tease me. He called me lazy. Said I never worked, ‘cause I spent so long just reading up about how the _Raddus_ worked. How she flew.”

 

Rey feels a slow smile creeping up on her as Rose speaks. “But?” she prompts.

 

“But when the First Order showed up unannounced and the main docking bay doors jammed, with Captain Poe Dameron stuck on the outside, it was this lazy reader who figured out that the issue was in the security keypad’s wiring _and_ fixed it in time to get Dameron inside before we made the jump outta there!”

 

Brixie makes a soft, appreciative nose. “Oh. I… oh.”

 

“Well done,” Rey says on an exhale.

 

For a brief instant, she recalls the Captain and Brixie’s conversation on Rhinnal, in which they’d discussed the importance of sticking to one’s convictions. The importance of the firmness of character. Idly, she wonders if he’d say the same now. Or if Brixie would.

 

After all, it occurs to her, conviction— or bravery— to the point of obstinance can cause just as much damage as being swayed by the opinions of others. There is value and consequences, she thinks, in both.

 

In her mind, she goes back over the contents of Rose’s story, and the events of yesterday, plus those that lead to it. She thinks about Poe and Terena, and how revered they are for their heroics, and what that might mean to Brixie. She thinks about her own family, and the influence they have held over her, both in absence and presence.

 

She thinks about Mashra, and a conversation over tea in a bunker that still lays half-buried in the sands of Jakku.

 

A decision made, and the conviction she’d clung to until it was all finished.

 

Until _they_ were finished.

 

Then she thinks about regret, and growth. What it is to lose, and learn, and try again. But in trying again, to steer clear of those terrible mistakes that were made the first time. To be wiser, and older.

 

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing, after all.

 

“Well,” Brixie declares, with theatrical seriousness, “I suppose the lesson here is that I just need to read up on cliff-jumping before trying to impress someone else!”

 

Rose chuckles— part amusement, part exasperation. “Oh, you!”

 

“No, _you_.” Brixie moves closer to her on the sofa, and begins to gently toy with the ends of Rose’s long black hair. In a voice so small and sweet Rey knows it is not meant for her, she murmurs, “Thank you, Rosie.”

 

Rey rises from her own sofa, moving to the kitchen to pour herself some more caf and give them some space. She still catches, very faintly, Rose’s reply: “Anytime, crumblebun.”

 

By the time she returns to the sofa, the moment has passed. Rose narrows her eyes at Rey even as Brixie continues to play with her hair; after a long moment of scrutiny, she throws out, “You look like you’re a million miles away, Rey.”

 

“Was thinking about my own speeder. Built it myself, from Imperial ship scraps. I loved that thing. It held… a lot of memories for me.” She thinks that over for a second, then amends, “ _Jakku_ holds a lot of memories for me. I took my own risks there—made plenty of mistakes, too.”

 

Rose hums pensively. “Even a place where we've suffered, where we've seen evil, can still be important to us.”

 

She knows that to be true. How she suffered on Jakku: the long years spent waiting for her family, the even longer ones endured after their return, and the sliver of one where she lived a life close to the one she truly wanted. The one she gave up. She is among friends, she realizes. Women who have loved and erred, women who are flawed as she is, and who will not condemn her.

 

“I found the Force there,” she says, a painful shivering gasp, a confession she has waited so long to make. “I fell in love and I found the Force, inside myself. And all around me. I was only just beginning to understand it when… it all fell apart. I couldn’t jump,” here she nods at Brixie, “or maybe I did, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it once I landed,” here she nods at Rose, “I—I lost so much time, to my mistakes.” For a moment, she is overcome, tears hot and angry pricking at her eyes. Rose reaches over to take her hand; the pressure is comforting, and familiar, and heartening. Finally, she manages to get out, “But… I think I learned my lesson, all the same.”

 

With a huff, Rose gives her hand one last squeeze, then surmises, “It all comes out in the wash, as Gram used to say.”

 

“Are you a… Jedi?” Brixie asks quietly, clearly perplexed and stuck on that one point of Rey’s narrative.

 

“To tell the truth, I don't really know,” Rey admits. “They weren't allowed to love, were they? I did. I think… I still might.”

 

Rose lips twitch; her smile is once-again knowing. “Do you? Hmm.”

 

“I think I do,” she mutters. “But I'm not sure if he… that is, I thought I'd lost a chance with… but now, there is… oh, there are…” an anguished groan slips out before she can temper her frustration or finish any one thought, and she drops her head into her hands. “I don't know anymore. I've always thought our past was too… painful. To get over, I mean.”

 

“For him or for you?” Brixie wonders aloud, and though her tone is not sharp, nor the question pointed, still it sets Rey to wondering if Brixie has put two and two together, and seen through her attempts at stoicism. If the maelstrom of unspoken sentiments raging between Rey and the Captain has gone less unnoticed than she’d previously assumed.

 

But Brixie looks so unperturbed, so innocent in her questioning, that Rey dismisses the notion.

 

“Both?” she replies wearily.

 

After a beat, she looks up. Brixie has begun braiding Rose’s hair into a simple plait that drops down over one shoulder. Both women are frowning at her.

 

“You should try again,” Rose asserts, at last. “With him, with someone else, whoever. I know it's scary, but—I dunno, I think it's worth it.”

 

Rey is not certain if Rose notices Brixie's widening eyes or subtle nodding from her vantage point. But Rey sees it: Brixie has taken those words to heart.

 

And not a second later, she asks of Rose, “And you?”

 

“Hm?”

 

Gently, Brixie turns Rose to face her. “Would you be willing to try again? After… everything with Finn?”

 

In a deceptively casual tone, her eyes boring a hole into Brixie's, Rose answers:

 

“For the right person? Of course I would.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

A trilling ring disturbs the lazy serenity of that afternoon; all three women lounge in the main room, absorbed in their own pursuits. Outside, a heavy rain batters the windows. The day is dark and tinged ever so faintly with melancholy, but there is comfort to be found, here in the quiet company the three of them have found.

 

Rey sits at the kitchen table, fiddling with the laundering unit's engine; Brixie and Rose lay curled up on the sofa together, Brixie watching an old holodrama, Rose reading the manual of a hydro-glycolic fuel cell she’s considering purchasing.

 

“Oh, hm,” Rose remarks, puzzled, as she rises and pads over to the table. Rey pays no mind; whoever it is, they are almost certainly not calling for her.

 

“Whuh?” Brixie asks, groggy, stirring from a light drowse.

 

“Well, I’m getting a hologram transmission. It’s… Ben?” Rose brow quirks. “Weird. There's no way they're on Hosnian Prime yet.”

 

“Answer it!” comes the command, from the sofa.

 

With an amused little snort, Rose does. “Well hello, Captain Solo!” she cries, to the flickering blue face that appears above the table. “Fancy seeing you here!”

 

Rey steals a glance long enough to catch his lips twitch, then trains her eyes back on her work.

 

All he says is, “Can I talk to Brixie? Alone?”

 

Rose's eyes cut to Rey— she can feel them on her— but still, she studiously avoids looking up.

 

A grunt issues from across the room as Brixie unearths herself from her mountain of blankets, then hobbles towards them. Rey tries not to make any indication that she cares, but it's no use; her curiosity wins out. So she tilts her head at Brixie in unspoken question, but Brixie gives a guileless shrug, her brows knitting together. When Rose offers the holoprojector, she accepts it then wordlessly limps out of the room.

 

“Any idea what that's about?” Rey whispers, as she listens for the clang of the heavy guest bedroom door swinging shut.

 

“Not a clue.”

 

After a moment of straining to hear the conversation— without success— they shrug at each other. Rose returns to the sofa and her manual, Rey to the engine.

 

Brixie comes out smiling ten minutes later, looking much closer to her usual chipper self. She returns the holoprojector to the table, and Rey catches a strain of something she's humming under her breath.

 

It's a cheerful, jaunty tune.

 

“Everything okay?” she asks after her, as Brixie re-buries herself in blankets beside Rose.

 

“Better than okay,” she declares earnestly. “Everything’s great.”

 

And then she focuses all of her attention on the holofilm, and as far as Rey can tell, for the time being anyway, the conversation is over.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The skies clear in the early evening; the dying light of Batuu's suns is golden-orange as it stretches in long rays across the valley; the air holds the scent of ozone and the sound of birdsong with equal freshness.

 

Rose and Brixie have long since fallen asleep on the sofa, so Rey resolves to go alone on a hike part of the way up the crater's side— the same hike she watched the Captain do, just a few days prior.

 

She brings her quarterstaff with her, as an assistance for some of the more difficult parts. But she finds herself missing its original purpose, and when she reaches a point along the trail where the mountainside levels off briefly into a flat rock outcropping, like a ledge, she turns and raises her staff in challenge to the great valley sprawling out before her.

 

Lunge forward, jab. Upward strike, twirl, downward strike. One step back, staff resting against her wrist and back, then swing around, at the place where her opponent’s ankles or waist might be. Another swing, this time at the head. Jab again.

 

Smoothly, she slides from stance to stance. Now her staff is behind her, now it is swinging through the air, now it hits the ground, now an imaginary opponent. Each move is precise, without hesitation.

 

In her heart, in her mind, in her soul, Rey may have forgotten what it is to use this weapon. What it is to have this bit of scrap metal be the difference between life and death, between portions and hunger. What it is to fight.

 

But her body has not.

 

Her body remembers.

 

Her body remembers all of it.

 

On and on she trains, even as her muscles grow tired and sore, her face flushed and drenched with sweat.

 

Something that has been withered and inert within her is re-awakening. A sapling appears, on the brink of shooting out leaves, of blooming.

 

By the time she finally tires, an hour has passed. The valley has descended into the violet shadows of twilight. She can barely lift her arms; the muscles in her legs are screaming.

 

Rey is exhausted. Not content, not at peace— there are too many memories connected to that quarterstaff, too many years of pain associated with the wielding of it— but… empty.

 

Expectant, somehow. Waiting for something. Her body remembers this, after all; why does she feel as though there is something _else_ it is trying to remember, too?

 

 

. . .

 

 

Once she climbs back down to the house, she eats a quiet dinner with her friends, heartened and envious all at once by Rose and Brixie's ever-bolder flirtation. Then she excuses herself early, citing the need for sleep. She hurtles without effort into a deep, deep slumber, and if she dreams of anything, she does not remember.

 

Brixie's side of the sleeper is still empty in the morning. As are the sofas.

 

Rey finds she is not that surprised, when she reviews the events and conversations of the past week. But when they stumble out of Rose's bedroom sometime around eleven, darting furtive looks her way, there is a second where she wonders if everything will be very different, and very awkward now.

 

And something else: a pang of concern, for the Captain, and his attachment to Brixie. Will he be hurt by this development?

 

Surely, the right thing for Brixie to do is to tell him. She’s on the brink of saying so, when Rose breaks the ice, cheeks flushed and laughing sheepishly:

 

“…Turns out the right person came along sooner rather than later.”

 

“For both of us,” Brixie adds, her fingers threaded in Rose's. She gives the shorter woman's arm a gentle swing.

 

It can wait, she decides. “When you know, you know,” is what she replies. Beaming at them both, she gestures to the kitchen. “Caf?”

 

They nod eagerly.

 

And that, as they say, is that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

On a walk that afternoon, Rose and Rey reach a long, flat plateau atop one of the valley’s many rolling hills. They’ve already completed Rose’s daily check-in with J8-MS, and are now simply rambling for pleasure. Rey carries her old sketchbook in hand, with the vague idea of seeking out a new subject.

 

They stride towards the far end of the plateau. Beyond the hill they’ve just climbed is a valley that dips low, lower than the others, encircling the hill on all visible sides. The undulating grasses that grow everywhere on the island fill it as a moat does a river. Mixed in with the grass is a pricklier-looking plant whose leaves Rey thinks she recognizes.

 

“Rose,” she begins, hesitant, glancing at her friend. Rose looks calm, unbothered, completely at ease with the world and her place in it. She smiles at Rey, eyebrows raised. “Rose, you and Brixie…”

 

Rose smirks. “Yeah?”

 

Haltingly, she asks, “What—what about—”

 

“C’mon, Rey, just ask about him.” Rose’s tone is teasing and gentle. “I promise I’ll tell you anything I can.”

 

She looks down at the grass, half-bent beneath her feet. “Aren’t you worried he’ll be hurt? About… Brixie?”

 

“Not one bit,” answers Rose. “He’ll be just fine, I promise.”

 

Rey can't stop her brow from furrowing in her confusion. “But—”

 

“The holocall, Rey.” A quirked eyebrow, a knowing smile. Of course: Brixie must have broken it off with him, when he contacted them. _Was he hurt?_ she wonders. _Did he mourn what he and Brixie could’ve had?_ At least he had Finn to talk to, but…

 

How she wishes it could have been her.

 

“Oh,” she says, numb, feeling foolish. Rose smiles kindly, in response. A long lull rushes in and stagnates between them, as they stand there, gazing at the sunny day. The breeze brushes the grasses against their legs.

 

 _It_ could _be you_ , she thinks. Surely… surely there is a space for her, somewhere between the wild leaps of youth and the weary forfeiture her life had become, before she left Jakku.

 

It's a struggle to keep the smile on her face; her lip trembles, threatening a frown.

 

She wants to believe in second chances so _badly_.

 

When Rose at last speaks, she sounds subdued. “This is one of my favorite places to go at the beginning and end of summer—when the delia pavorums are in bloom.”

 

“Maybe I’ll stay a while, and draw it.” Rey brings a hand up to shield her eyes from the sunlight, and shakes her wind-mussed hair free from her face.

 

“You want company?”

 

“Only if _you_ want,” she says, turning to look at Rose. Her friend’s eyes slide towards home, where Brixie lies napping.

 

“I can stay,” she offers reluctantly.

 

“Go!” Rey shoos her away with a laugh. “Go check on her.”

 

Rose laughs along with her, already backing away. “You sure?”

 

“I’ll be fine. I think I can handle myself.”

 

With another chuckle and a wave, Rose turns and ambles back down the way they've just climbed.

 

Alone now, Rey drags in a deep breath, taking in all the wild, verdant scents of the afternoon. She lets her eyes drift closed, and collapses to the ground, settling herself in the grass in a cross-legged position.

 

She’s seen and smelled and tasted more green and more life in the past two and a half months than she had her whole life on Jakku. And she’s still not tired of any of it. She’s pretty sure she never will be.

 

There is such a feeling of serenity and safety, here at the top of this small hill. She is small, but not insignificant. And it’s almost as if something is awakening within her… the sapling again, she realizes.

 

Second chances. A new beginning, a promise she’d long forgotten.

 

For the first time in years, Rey does not banish that promise. She turns towards it, pictures the sapling in her mind, and reaches for it with her senses.

 

The more she reaches, the more she sees. The more she sees, the more she _feels_.

 

Now there is not just the sapling. Now there is grass, everywhere grass. And trees, and moss, and shrubs, and wildflowers, a thousand different kinds. Now there are fathiers and banthas and fish and butterflies and insects and deep in the earth, wriggling blindworms and burrowers and the bones of those creatures who died long ago. Now there are petrified trees, an entire planet spiked with them.

 

Now there are ocean tides shifting at the beckoning of the moon, two suns around which the planet slingshots, again and again, for aeons.

 

All of this, she feels within her.

 

And more: now there are not just all the wildflowers, but delia pavorum— their energy fallen dormant, dry and cold— but Rey _feels_ them, each living root, each taproot and each spindly extension; she breathes in their calm death, breathes out their bright life. Without consciously meaning to, she wills them to come back to her.

 

And then she _consciously_ wills it so.

 

 _Open,_ she begs the flowers. _Come back. Open again. Show me life, show me rebirth._

 

There is fear, here, with all this life and death. The old fear, just as she remembered it. But it is her own, and it is not unconquerable. Rey stares down that fear, and she does not blink.

 

Calm rushes through her, then settles: a wave filling a tidal pool. She is tranquil, both empty and full. She is a drop of water making its way from the clouds to the tops of the crater’s snowy peaks down to the sea. She is the water and the pool, filling herself. She is a newly born fathier calf stumbling to her hooves in the forest nearby and she is a primordial star collapsing in on herself somewhere across the galaxy.

 

She is alive. Well and truly alive, and connected to it all.

 

 _Show me,_ she entreats.

 

There is a change in the air pressure, a sudden drop or rise perhaps, as if the flow of energy in all the cosmos is rearranging itself just for her. A slow turn, but picking up momentum quickly; a boulder rolling down a hill, an idyllic day passing in the blink of an eye. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck rises.

 

It takes Rey’s breath away. She is working so hard, and yet she has not moved since she sat herself down in the grass. Sweat beads across her brow, rolls down her temples; she pants, her limbs trembling from the effort.

 

_**Awaken.**_

 

She opens her eyes.

 

Things are not how she left them.

 

The valley is filled with mere grass no longer. Mixed in among the swaying blades are delicate yellow clusters, bright tiny blooms bursting forth like the foaming swells of the ocean’s tides.

 

Delia pavorum, everywhere. As far as the eye can see. Not just the valley, but up over the next hill, and the one beyond that. Not just one wave, but a rolling sea of them— wave after wave of yellow delia pavorum blossoms. It should not be, but Rey called to them, and they came back for her.

 

“By the Force,” she breathes out, astonished by what she is seeing.

 

By what she has _done_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“I have a favor to ask,” she says to Rose, once they’ve got a large pot of Alderaan stew simmering on the cooking burner that evening.

 

Rose turns to her, leaning a hip against the edge of the kitchen counter. “Shoot.”

 

In lieu of a response, Rey gestures for Rose to wait, then heads in the direction of the extra bedroom. She finds what she’s looking for nestled in its box, right where it belongs, then returns to the main room. Passing over the box and its contents to a waiting Rose, she requests, “Could you… make something for me? A chain, to hang this on?”

 

Upon opening the lid and finding the shining silver-black pearl inside, Rose smirks. “I recognize this,” she teases, sing-song, “Naboo night pearl. Bu-u-ut… where'd you get a Naboo night pearl, I wonder?”

 

From across the room, Brixie pipes up, her attention diverted from the HoloNet article about the sweat bees of Scarif she'd been reading aloud to them earlier. “Pretty sure anyone can buy a night pearl, for the right price.”

 

“Doubt it.” Rose shakes her head at Brixie then meets Rey’s eyes, one dark brow arched. “They’re so rare, they’re hardly seen anywhere besides on the crowns of Nabooian royalty.” The smirk returns. “Nope, I’d bet every credit I have that somebody gave you this. And that that somebody has a connection to Naboo.” A pause, long enough for her to tap her chin in faux-contemplation. “Hmmm, perhaps a member of a family associated with the monarchy?”

 

Rey gives a shamefaced shrug, utterly mortified at being so transparent. “I didn’t know how…” she manages.

 

Just like that, Brixie is up out of her chair, drawing closer to the kitchen. “ _Oh_ ,” she breathes, drawn-out, her mouth the same shape as the sound emitting from it. “Oh, maker! Him? But Rey, you never—”

 

Rey feels her lower lip begin to wobble, her throat seizing up. She’d known that presenting this pearl to Rose— who seems to have caught much more than she’s tried to let on— might lead here. To this conversation. About him.

 

She’s not entirely ready, but she’s ready enough. Especially with Rose, who she knows will understand, and Brixie, who has not mentioned the Captain once since her holocall with him the other day.

 

“We were young. On Jakku,” she tries, and even just that makes something twist painfully in her chest.

 

“Hey, it’s all right,” Rose soothes, coming in for a hug, her arms wrapped around Rey before she has time to object. “Some things are tough to talk about.”

 

After a moment of resistance, Rey lets out a heavy sigh, and leans her head atop of Rose’s.

 

“Does that mean when we were talking about—that breakup you mentioned—but you said—”

 

“I’m sorry, Brixie,” she says.

 

She raises her eyes to meets Brixie’s, and finds confusion there. It eases after a moment into something gentler. “…It’s okay,” she replies, mollified, but clearly still a bit hurt. “You didn’t have to lie, though.”

 

“I know, but I couldn’t—it’s been so long since I spoke about him, and you and him were so—”

 

“I get it,” interjects Rose. “To protect yourself, sometimes you set things aside.”

 

“…Or bury them,” Brixie adds after a second, giving a sad nod.

 

Rey’s shoulders sag with relief. “Exactly.”

 

“Well consider the relationship unburied,” Rose pauses just long enough to glance at Brixie, who nods again, more eagerly now, “And that chain as good as made,” she concludes, eying the pearl.

 

“I can pay you for it—” Rey offers, but Rose cuts her off at the pass:

 

“Nonsense.”

 

“That’s an awful lot for just a gift,” she murmurs.

 

“Okay,” laughs Rose, “How about this? Milk the banthas for the rest of the time you’re here, in exchange. It’s my least favorite chore—and now it can be yours.”

 

“Deal,” she blurts out, some other part of her thawing at the generosity of her friend. Humbled, she sends back a soft, “Thank you, Rose.”

 

“Anytime, friend.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Uh… did anyone else notice all the delia pavorum in the valley this morning?” asks Brixie, as they are sipping caf the next day.

 

Rose frowns. “Wait, what? That’s strange—they shouldn’t do that for a couple months.” She rises from the table, Brixie in tow, and heads for the front door.

 

Panic swipes at Rey, even as she makes to follow. How will she explain this? What will they think?

 

Will they fear her, and the Force, as _he_ once did?

 

Will she be shunned?

 

Rose freezes in the doorway, staring at the world of yellow blossoms outside. Slowly, she turns back to Rey, who stands fidgeting by a sofa. “Did… you… do this?”

 

Brixie turns as well, her eyes wide with surprise. “Wait. Is this something you can… _do_?” she asks, voice pitched higher than usual.

 

Willing herself not to cry, Rey blinks hard and fast, pushing her nose in the air. She draws on every ounce of her family’s infamous pride.

 

“And if it is?” she rejoins.

 

Rose stares at her for a moment, a sympathetic moue pulling her lips downward. “The ash-rabbits will have you to thank for a fat summer,” she answers soberly. “And a lean autumn.”

 

A tense second passes.

 

Brixie cracks first. Just an escaped hiccup of laughter. But it catches quickly; soon, Rose is giggling along.

 

And before she knows it, Rey herself is laughing too.

 

She takes heart in the realization then that she will not have to leave. That she has been accepted.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Two nights later— Brixie having officially moved all her belongings out, she and Rose having long since bid Rey an amiable goodnight and disappeared into Rose’s room together— Rey sits up late in her sleeper, reading on a borrowed datapad. Each night since the one they arrived, she’s noticed, is warmer than the last, and she doesn’t even need her bedding tonight. She wears only a simple sleeveless shift, and she’s cracked open the room’s lone window.

 

The chatter of crickets, birds, and bilgefrogs has lingered long past sundown, and a mild breeze brushes in, keeping the temperature of the bedroom tolerable and carrying with it all the scents of the outside world.

 

She taps the screen, continuing onto the next page of an old article she is reading, about the strange and unfortunate— but unsurprising, considering his rank and the people with whom he associated— death of Brendol Hux.

 

Poisoning, it would seem.

 

The night smells fresh, and sweet, and clean. Rey breathes deeply as she reads, enjoying the sounds and smells of a living world.

 

She doesn’t even remember falling asleep; one second she is reading, her eyelids growing heavy, and the next, she is under the tree, between his legs. She shifts, settling back against his chest, a smile plucking at her lips when she hears him hum, “Hmmm, there you are.”

 

“Here I am,” she affirms, and reaches back for his hands, which he readily cedes. She brings them around her, wrapping herself up in him as if he were a blanket, and sighs her satisfaction. Chandrila’s ocean waves rumble, sounding both near and far: whoosh, swish, shurr. Its moons are bright as ever, and they cast dark shadows in the Dameron orchard.

 

“Do you remember this?”

 

His hands have begun to roam; one rests on her belly, his big thumb brushing back and forth over the space between her breasts, the other travels lower, fiddling with the hem of her sleep shirt, which has ridden up to her thighs.

 

“I remember everything,” she says.

 

He taps out a melody on her exposed thigh. “Not what happens in here.”

 

“Almost everything,” she amends, nervy, breathless, laying a hand on his to direct it under her shirt.

 

“Can I?” he asks, and she can almost hear the smile in his rich voice. The soft teasing in his tone.

 

“Please.”

 

His hands are warm from touching her. He slides the shirt up, up, up to her waist; she grabs hold of each of his knees, rising on either side of her like sturdy armrests, and tries, as subtly as she can, to thrust up at his teasing fingers.

 

“Shh,” she hears. “I’ve got you.”

 

And then he is rubbing a taunting path around her sex, not quite touching it. Just testing her.

 

She manages to grit out, “ _Ben_ ,” and like she’s spoken the passcode, he dives in, thumb strumming her clit, the hard pressure on that hot, sensitive bundle of nerves exactly what she needs. His thick fingers slip along her folds, which have quickly become slick and heated. Everything is heated, for that matter: her body, the night air, his breath against her cheek.

 

Hot, slick, throbbing. All these sensations, beyond anything she’s ever dreamed. Waking up within the dream, recognizing the simulacrum, she shudders and cries out, “ _Ben?_ ”

 

“I want you to do something for me,” he rumbles in her ear, low. “At least—I want you to try. Will you?”

 

His free hand strokes over the soft skin of her belly, up towards her breasts. He palms one, gently, then the other.

 

Her legs spasm with the rising pleasure, the old storm, his hands on her just like she remembers. Between ragged breaths, she gets out: “Whu—?”

 

“I’ve got you, I said,” he repeats, pressing a chaste kiss to the side of her neck, right where her racing pulse must be visible.

 

To his reassurance and to his question, she huffs, “O-okay,” as she bucks against his hand. He slips a finger up into her, curling it. Both searching and claiming.

 

She glances down. The inside of her upper thighs are slick-shiny in the moonlight, and she can feel dampness trickling downwards. She can feel him, too; hard against her back, even through his trousers. He moves with her, ever so slightly.

 

It’s beyond good. She was wrong, it’s not how she remembers; it wasn’t ever quite this good when they were young and insatiable. There’s no tentativeness now, so much less fear. There is just this twisting buzz zipping through her, just the bliss and the understanding that this, what they have right here, could never be wrong.

 

Rey is seconds from shattering, a piece of amber hurtling inexorably towards a hard, sharp surface. There’s no telling if she’ll survive the impact. But she keens out her rapture, and rocks against his hand. She’s not afraid anymore; she’s not going to give this up again.

 

“Now focus,” he directs, still working her. “Are you focused?”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“Good. Rey—I want you to remember this. Remember.”

 

“Rememb—?” she starts to ask, but it’s too late; the storm has snuck up on her, and she’s coming already, hard. A succession of sweet fluttering pulses starts in her cunt, every muscle in her stomach and legs gone rigid with tension, toes curling from the joy if it, the utter rightness, before everything loosens, she blinks…

 

…And she is awake, in her sleeper in Rose’s extra bedroom, the night dark and its heat oppressive, weighing down on her. She’s soaked, she realizes after a second; not only soaked through in her underwear, but sweat-drenched. The sheets underneath her are sodden.

 

None of that bothers her, because Rey _remembers_.

 

The dream tries to vanish as it always does but this time she snatches at it and holds fast, and after a moment, the memory of it solidifies in her mind. In her body, too; in her bones and her muscles and in her cunt.

 

She remembers.

 

And she understands: it wasn’t just a dream. It couldn’t have been. It was too vivid, too sensual. Still not enough to sate her yearning for him, but much more than the usual phantasms of sleep. No, no. The colors, the smells, the sensations, the sounds; it may not have been real, but… it certainly wasn’t pure fantasy.

 

Every part of her remembers. Remembers him, his body, remembers other times they met under the tree in that liminal space between sleep and waking, remembers soft whispering exchanges in soft rose-gold light. Soft touches exchanged, soft lips touching places that have not been kissed since he left.

 

“Stars,” she gasps out, blinking up at the darkness with wonderment.

 

Like a jolt of electricity coursing through her, the thought presents itself: she remembers it all, all these dreams-that-could-not-possibly-be-only-dreams… does _he_?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! First, let me just say: sorry about the delay on this chapter! Life has been a little crazy lately. Second, maybe you are saying to yourself, as you read this:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> In which case I would say, who really knows _what_ the Force can and can't do? I'm chalking all this Force dream-sharing and flower-blooming up to creative license and calling it a day! 😉
> 
> Anyway, some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa style: [Kushiban](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kushiban), the [Mon Calamari](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mon_Calamari), who read, write, and speak Basic as well as [Mon Cal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mon_Calamarian).
> 
> What's a [FC-20 speeder bike](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/FC-20_speeder_bike)?
> 
> What's a [shipyard](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Shipyard)? 😏
> 
> What's a [hydro-glycolic fuel cell](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hydro-glycolic_fuel_cell)?
> 
> Some fun info about [training with a quarterstaff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarterstaff#Historical_practice%5B9%5D).
> 
> Mmm, [Alderaan stew](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alderaan_stew).
> 
> Star wars creatures speed round! What is a [burrower](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Burrower), [blindworm](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blindworm), [butterfly](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Butterfly), [ash-rabbit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ash-rabbit), [cricket](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cricket), [sweat bee](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sweat_bee), and [bilgefrog](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bilgefrog)?
> 
> Okay, I think that's all from me for now! Thanks for reading 💖


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “[Ergel] had taken a very good house in [Bastatha], a lofty dignified situation, such as becomes a man of consequence; and both he and [Verla] were settled there, much to their satisfaction.
> 
> [Rey] entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, ‘Oh! when shall I leave you again?’” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I have another absolutely _stunning_ piece of art to share with you. The amazing [kylorenjen](https://kylorenjen.tumblr.com/) has recreated this quiet [moment](https://kylorenjen.tumblr.com/post/183777395640/this-drawing-is-dedicated-to-voicedimplosives-and) between Rey and her Captain in their shared dream and I am absolutely obsessed with it. Please go check it out and thank you again Jen, for painting it!! 💓

**42 ABY.**

 

A month passes on Batuu, the weather taking a turn towards sweltering, and when Rey reflects back upon the weeks, she finds she isn’t really able to account for what has filled them. She does know this much: there are long leisurely meals, late nights spent laughing and talking with Rose and Brixie, chores to be done, treks throughout the valley, and a communion with everything around her that demands careful exploring. It is a peaceful month. Of that, she is certain.

 

And something else: she feels herself growing stronger, where once she felt weak. Braver, where she’d felt timidity.

 

Primed to seek out her future, where once she’d been mired in the present.

 

She thinks often of _him_. How he is, what he’s doing.

 

The speculation is not as fraught as it once was; instead, thoughts of him bring a sense of anticipation. After all, she knows now they will meet again each night, in their dreams. Some days, knowing that drives her to distraction. It causes the hours to slip away unnoticed or slow to a crawl; either way, it is exquisite torture.

 

Lulled as they are by the carnality of stolen time, they rarely ever speak in those dreams besides soft murmured endearments. Under the uneti tree, they are tactile creatures. To ask for cerebral exchanges of one another seems unjust.

 

It’s the Force; it must be. A blatant misuse of it, no doubt. But how can they be blamed for what their unconscious minds do when they are at rest? Or… is it even them, performing such a feat? If they meet in their dreams, maybe it is simply the will of the Force.

 

This idea doesn’t fill her with the old remorse or heartbreak. Again, just anticipation.

 

Just an eagerness that has been missing for far too long.

 

 

. . .

 

 

At first, Brixie makes excuses to Kes and Shara Bey as to why she must stay on Batuu so long after she has healed from her injuries. But when they keep on calling, wondering why she hasn’t returned, she comes clean.

 

Rey can hear her in Rose’s bedroom one afternoon, where she has absconded with the comlink. “I’m happy here, guys,” she assures them. And: “I don’t want to come back. Not yet, anyway.” And: “No, I’m not sure when.” And: “Yes, I’ve told Chandriltech… technically, I’m on sabbatical.” And: “No, you shouldn't be worried.” And: “Yes, you will see me again.” And finally: “Yes, I promise!”

 

Rey backs her up when Shara Bey and Kes ask to speak in a private holocall, assuring them that she trusts Brixie’s judgement.

 

Summer is truly upon them by then, with blistering hot days and nights that aren’t much cooler. Rose has no climate control in her home, so when the metal walls and roof refuse to let go of their residual heat, the women tromp out to the closest copse of trees, from which they hang synthatex hammocks.

 

Rey relishes the chance to once again swing herself to sleep. And though the sensation of sleeping suspended brings with it terrible memories, she allows for the fact that it brings good memories, too.

 

Memories of their brief time together. Memories of his hands on her. Memories of the storm.

 

She sleeps soundly, and meets him each night to revive those memories. The becalmed eye of a spinning storm, him and her. Peace.

 

So the month passes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Finn calls late one night. The three of them are half in their cups on Batuu brew, counting shooting stars outside. A gentle breeze rustles the grasses and the trees and wicks away their sweat, for which Rey is grateful.

 

After Brixie has accosted him with a riotous peal of giggling and he and Rose have exchanged a few amiable updates about Chandrila and the fathiers and other day-to-day minutiae— minus the contents of Leia’s ongoing meetings, on which he has been sworn to silence— he asks to speak with Rey.

 

“My, my, what an honor,” she teases in greeting, after she takes the holoprojector from Rose. Then she succumbs to her own tipsy giggling. When she finally settles down and brings herself to focus on Finn’s flickering blue face, she catches a hint of amused forbearance that has set his lips to twitching.

 

“You alright there, Rey?” he asks.

 

Playfully she croons, “I am now!”

 

“Hm.” For a moment he grows very stern, brow furrowing, and then the jig is up; he breaks into a wide smile. “Nice to see you having a good time.”

 

“It’s wonderful here, Finn,” she replies. “Paradise. Don’t you ever miss it?”

 

“Yep.”

 

Her mirth dies off at his forlorn tone. “Well… you’ve left for a good cause, at least.”

 

He huffs. “I’d like to think so. Listen Rey, I’m between meetings so I can’t stay on the line for long, but—I’ve gotta make the trip out to Jakku in about a week.”

 

“Jakku?” she busts out, nearly tumbling out of her chair in shock. She glances over and Brixie and Rose; they look just as surprised as her.

 

“Yep. Have to deliver a datachip to Master Luke Skywalker—by hand.”

 

“…Oh.”

 

“So, then I had the thought… maybe you’d wanna go back for a visit? See what they’ve done with your old place? Skywalker asked about you when I spoke to him. Said you’d be welcome any time.”

 

The very idea of it is daunting. Is she ready to return, so soon after leaving? Does she even _want_ to be ready? To see what has become of the building in which she and her mother toiled away their precious time together? To confirm what she’s known all along: that Jakku never really needed her? She peers up at the stars for a moment, hoping they will provide an answer.

 

They remain as beautiful and impassive as ever. Silent. Distant. Without judgement or counsel.

 

Looking back to Finn, she begins to shake her head. “I—”

 

“You don’t have to answer right away,” he hastens to add. “Take a day or two, and think about it.”

 

“Yes, alright.” Rey works to return Finn’s smile, though she can feel it not quite reaching her eyes. “Let me think about it.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

She does. That night— not long after they end the call, she curls up in her hammock, fiddling with the lone black pearl that now hangs from the chain Rose has fashioned for her— she stares up at the leaves above her head. Back and forth she swings. Back. Forth. Slow but steady. The gentle swaying helps her think.

 

So long does she think that the sky is beginning to lighten by the time her eyes finally sink closed. During this lost night, she thinks about so many things. About fear, hers and his. About what she has reclaimed here on Batuu. About the Force, and change. And she wonders: is she free of all that came to pass on Jakku, if she cannot face it again?

 

What would it mean, really, to return? It’s not forever. It’s only a visit.

 

 _You will not be trapped there,_ she promises herself. _Never again._

 

_You are not the same sad, lost soul who stepped off that ship onto Chandrila._

 

She’d like to ask the Skywalkers about the dreams, if she can devise a roundabout way to do so. And maybe… it could be interesting, to see what has become of Ergel’s bar. And Cratertown. And Niima Outpost.

 

 _On second thought,_ she reverses. _Kriff the outpost, and kriff Unkar Plutt._

 

By the time she falls asleep, Rey is determined to go. She wants to see it with her altered eyes, with the benefit of distance and time. Even in the handful of months that she’s been gone, she has grown in ways she had not for years; she can feel it, she sees it in the mirror, she hears it in the way she speaks.

 

She _does_ want to see Jakku.

 

But what occurs to her is this: even more than she wants to see Jakuu, she wants Jakku to see _her_. As she is now.

 

Altered, beyond recognition.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“It’s time for me to leave, I fear,” she informs Rose and Brixie later that morning. They’re sitting under the shade of some scrubby trees on the banks of one of the valley’s wider rivers, their feet submerged in its burbling shallows. Brixie’s brows jump at the announcement, but Rose merely gives an understanding nod. Rey explains, “Finn’s invited me to go back to Jakku with him. Visit Master Skywalker.”

 

“Are you—going to become a Jedi now?” Brixie asks.

 

She laughs. “I don’t think so. But… he might have some advice for me. What I am to do next.”

 

“You could always talk to him by comm or holo,” Rose says. “You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to, Rey.”

 

A resolved shake of her head. “I’ve thought it over. I’m ready. To—see Jakku again, I mean. I can’t explain it but it feels—important.”

 

Again, Rose nods.

 

“I’m staying,” Brixie declares.

 

Then she glances at Rose for affirmation. With a toss of her wide-brimmed hat onto the grass behind her, Rose leans in and smacks a kiss on Brixie’s lips. There she lingers for a moment longer than is chaste, the kiss melting from something theatrical to something warmer, more earnest— something heated. Rey averts her gaze until they finally break apart, at which point Rose turns back to her.

 

“She’s staying.”

 

“I’d figured as much,” she remarks, amused.

 

Brixie beams at her. “I’m thinking about developing a series of ranching droids—hardier than just a vet droid, and more complex than the farming ones,” she tells Rey. “More specialized for a place like this.”

 

“I have no doubt you’ll come up with something wonderful,” Rey says. “And should you sell it, that it’ll be the best on the market.”

 

At Brixie’s delighted giggle, Rose gives a happy hum; from the big bag beside her, she pulls out a bottle of Ambrostine, fine sweet liqueur the color of a fiery Chandrilan sunset. She pours three small glasses, also procured from the bag. Upon dispersing them, she raises her glass— Rey and Brixie following suit— then toasts:

 

“To the future. And the past. And all our days in between.”

 

“Here here,” says Brixie.

 

The three drink readily to that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

That afternoon— having run through a systems check on _Nightbloomer_ with the Captain’s astromech, 2BB-2, her sole co-pilot on the journey to Jakku, and having familiarized herself with the overwhelming luxury of his yacht’s beautiful, state-of-the-art interior— Rey sits at the kitchen table, helping where she can while Rose and Brixie cook up a storm for her.

 

During her time on Batuu, she’s ascertained that she’s more or less shit at cooking; having grown up sustaining herself on rations that required no more than a bit of water and some patience, this revelation doesn’t really come as a surprise. But she’s grateful for the lengths to which her friends are going to ensure she doesn’t have to resort to synthetic food during her passage. And she’s been assigned to the duty of chopping vegetables, a task to which she finds herself equal. She’s glad for it, for something to occupy her hands while thoughts of the flight and of _him_ occupy her mind.

 

When the last of the charbote root has been diced and delivered to Brixie’s waiting skillet, Rose disappears into her bedroom and returns with a small black box Rey recognizes at once: a handboard.

 

“Heard you’re quite the prodigy,” she says, nodding towards Brixie as she hands the instrument to Rey.

 

“Can anyone really be a prodigy on this thing?” wonders Rey.

 

“Oh come on, give us some music while we cook for you, Rey,” Brixie cajoles. “Fair’s fair.”

 

Rey waves her hand over the handboard, trying not to remember the pain and melancholy of the last time she held one.

 

A lovely sound issues from it, just like on Gatalenta. No, she won’t dwell on that day right now. Instead, she focuses on creating something cheerful. She wiggles her fingers rapidly over its surface. The tune produced is lively, with a quick tempo and a full, round sound.

 

Celebratory.  _Perfect_ , she thinks.

 

There is so much to celebrate here on Batuu, surrounded by the happiness of her friends’ newfound love. It feels like home. Sitting at the table, toodling around on the handboard while they laugh and joke at the counter, she is content. Brixie pulls Rose into an impromptu waltz as she plays, nearly allowing the spiceloaf to burn, which sends them all into another round of giggling.

 

(It feels like the home he'd offered to mold Jakku into for her. Like family and belonging and comfort.)

 

She almost cancels her plans and stays.

 

But she'd decided to go. She’s promised Finn she would. And whatever else changes or evolves about her, Rey is still a woman of her word. And she still wants Jakku to see her.

 

 _Besides,_ she thinks to herself as she raises _Nightbloomer_ up into a clear blue sky the next morning, waving one more goodbye out the viewport to a hugging Brixie and Rose, _this time should be just for them._

 

After all, you only get that glow of new love once with the person you've chosen, a truth Rey understands all too well. But as she leaves the atmosphere of Batuu, adjusting the phototropic shielding on her viewports to filter out the blinding light of Batuu’s suns and double-checking the course she and 2BB-2 have plotted a final time before they make the jump to lightspeed… that understanding doesn't fill her with the same sorrow it once did.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Many, many hours later, having slumped low in the pilot’s seat to steal a few minutes’ rest, she meets the Captain in an exhausted gasp of a dream. Everything is half-real as always, all sensual touches that are real enough to suffice, but not real enough to truly satisfy.

 

He whispers a word to her right before waking:

 

“Kaliida.”

 

Her eyes open. Outside, the galaxy is flying past in a blur of blue and black and white. Immediately, she leans forward, intent on using the navcomp’s connection to the HoloNet to search for it. She gets a few results that don’t seem pertinent, and then:

 

_“Kaliida Nebula, Outer Rim. Several parsecs in width and depth, located along the Balmorra Run.”_

 

The Balmorra Run, she recalls having overheard once on Jakku— though she has no recollection where or when, maybe from someone passing through Unkar Plutt’s stand, maybe at Ergel’s bar— is a route through the dangerous nebula, used by smugglers bringing goods in and out of Naboo. To reach it is just a short detour from the route she has planned.

 

Without a second thought, she gives 2BB-2 the order to re-plot their coordinates.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When _Nightbloomer_ drops out of lightspeed, they are on the outer reaches of the Ryndellia system. Its star is no more than a distant beacon, blinking faintly in the void. All she can see from her seat is the bright tunnel of shimmering crimson and fuschia before them; it grows ever fierier, bright yellows and oranges, as it stretches away from the ship.

 

They’re here; _Nightbloomer_ is hovering at the mouth of the Kaliida Nebula.

 

It's massive. If she were to estimate, she’d be inclined to say a dozen _Ravager’_ s could fly through side-by-side and never once would their crew have to worry about hulls touching. The Captain’s yacht is miniscule by comparison; for a moment, Rey shrinks down in her seat, awestruck and intimidated.

 

Then the first creature flies past, coming up on the yacht from behind. Immediately, 2BB-2 cuts the engine and all support systems, so the ship floats inert, dark, and silent. The creature dwarfs _Nightbloomer_ , easily ten times its size. Its monstrous wings— smooth, shining in the crimson light like the slick skin of a waterborne creature— span half the width of the bright tunnel.

 

 _“Neebray manta,”_ chirps 2BB-2 in Binary. _“Blind. Feeds on helium and dust. Can only sense through heat or vibration.”_

 

“Ah,” is her reply, no more than a tight gasp.

 

Another flies past, swooping up the starboard side of the ship then continuing onward. She notes how much larger it is than the first; its wings nearly touch the swirling walls of dust and gas to either side of them. A baby and its parent, perhaps. The smaller doubles back, revealing a round head dotted with dark nodules, a gaping maw and dull red eyes. For as impressive as its wings are, its body is comparatively small, limbless but for three swaying tentacles extending from the underside that seem to help it navigate whatever currents might be found within the nebula.

 

The mantas circle each other, gliding. The smaller cries out, a long high-pitched wail, and the larger answers in a deep bone-rattling bellow.

 

They are terrible. And beautiful. They leave her speechless. And then, with a few flaps of their massive wings, they are gone, flying off towards the light and heat of the star being born, in the heart of the nebula.

 

Rey is all alone.

 

She doesn’t feel that way, though.

 

Almost like a hologram, like a ghostly vision, they appear to her: young Ben, no more than eleven she suspects, and Han, just starting to go grey. There they stand in the cockpit of a beat-up old Corellian light freighter, watching this very same scene unfold before their eyes. Han’s hand rests on Ben’s thin shoulder. The boy already stands as tall as his chest; it won’t be long until he’s taller than his father.

 

Han cracks and for a moment, looks at his son with such tenderness. Such gratitude for the choices the boy has made. For choosing him. Young Ben turns to offer his father a goofy smile. He’s still growing into his outsized features and bares all the gangliness and clumsiness of a dingory pup. Han smiles back.

 

And she is there with them.

 

The tears slip free, hot and stinging; she does not fight them. She allows herself this.

 

She cries for that Han, for that Ben. For the time that has been lost. For the people who have been lost, too.

 

For herself. For what she has lost and what she has permitted to be taken from her.

 

And when she’s quieted, when the tears have dried and the terrible ache in her chest has eased, the _Falcon_ and the Solo boys are gone. But she finds it’s not so painful as she might’ve thought, to occupy this space without him. To know he was here without her. Once at least, in childhood, but maybe other times too.

 

(It could’ve been with her, had things been different. She breathes in the pang of grief that stabs at her, sucks it deep into her lungs, and then exhales, letting it go. Releasing it.)

 

She is grateful that the Force chose to show her that moment between them.

 

Another neebray manta flaps past, close enough that the wind created by its wings buffets the ship, sending it into a sidelong roll and 2BB-2 into a momentary panic. When the neebray has soared further into the nebula, they boot up the systems and engine once more so that the ship can be set to rights.

 

Rey smiles after the mantas. Dangerous beasts, yes. But also: creatures perfectly content to do nothing more than live on cosmic dust and gas, to soar through the depths of space, to be no more or less than what they are. She admires them. She has taken heart at the sight of them. It seems a good sort of life. She can understand why Han chose it for himself, and why Ben did too.

 

There is serenity to be found in the moment, so Rey cozies up to it, embraces it, wraps herself up in it.

 

She exhales again, another deep breath released.

 

Peace. Pain, but peace.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Cratertown is gone.

 

This is what she discovers, when she brings _Nightbloomer_ down into the sere bright atmosphere of Jakku, flying far above the blonde dunes in the Captain’s sleek transport, undoubtedly making quite an impression on any remaining scavengers who happen to see.

 

The bar is gone, the shanties are gone, all of it is gone. (She shouldn’t be as alarmed as she is by the sight; she knows all too well, nothing is forever on Jakku.) In their place is the foundation of a great stone temple, still under construction. Countless species buzz around the structure as Rey lands, then lowers the yacht’s ventral boarding ramp. She tosses back a few instructions to 2BB-2 before heading out into the dazzling sunlight.

 

“Rey!”

 

Finn stands tall and proud upon the sands not far from the ship, looking handsome, dignified in a senator’s sweeping charcoal-hued robes. His dark brow shines with sweat; reflexively, he pulls a handkerchief from somewhere to dab it dry.

 

He’s flanked by a hulking droid who is armed with what amounts to an arsenal, and an Imroosian, dressed in a sleek plasticene suit that is clearly impractical for the desert. Her chalky white scalp glitters in the slanted afternoon light and her pitch-black eyes skitter skeptically over Rey.

 

“Hullo,” Rey greets them, squinting as she clambers down the ramp and into Finn’s waiting embrace.

 

“Man, am I happy to see you again.” He pulls back, holding on by the biceps, and his own eyes do a quick perusal of her form. Then he nods. “You look good. Healthy.”

 

Rey chuckles. “Thanks, Finn. You too. I mean, you look… important.”

 

“That’s me,” he drawls, with a snort. “Big deal.” He lets go of Rey to gesture towards the Imroosian, who has watched this exchange in silence. “This is my personal advisor and assistant, Angmi.” Black lines traverse her pale face; they twist like cracks in ice when she gives a restrained smile and dips her head in a nod. Rey responds in kind.

 

Finn leans in. “She’s very serious.”

 

“Ah,” says Rey.

 

Angmi raises one thin brow, but otherwise does not comment. With a dry laugh, Finn gestures to the droid. “And that’s Gee-Three, my bodyguard.”

 

The droid nods with equal solemnity.

 

Again, Rey mirrors the gesture.

 

“Also very serious.”

 

“I see that,” she chirps. The two figures stand stone still behind Finn, unsmiling and unwavering. She herself lets loose a nervous chuckle.

 

Finn rolls his eyes. “Now that  _that's_ out of the way, I can give you a tour of the place. C’mon.”

 

Eying the beginnings of the temple, she gives a tiny shake of her head. “I should—I should help Bee-Too with the systems shutdown—”

 

“Hey,” says Finn, “I know Solo. Trust me, he wouldn’t keep an astromech around who couldn’t handle that stuff on its own.”

 

In the distance, brown-robed figures mill around the temple’s base, along with an assortment of younglings and scrawny scavengers and people who are clearly— from their purposeful strides, and the authoritative snap in their voices— former military. More species than she even recognizes; all hard at work.

 

She swallows, then stammers, “My—my uh, staff—”

 

Angmi finally deigns to speak. “You are among friends here, young Rey of Jakku.” Her ageless voice is rough, like sandpaper scraping across stone, but her tone is kind, and her black eyes lend her an air of omniscience that Rey finds somehow both disconcerting and comforting.

 

“Yeah.” Finn’s expression, when she flits her gaze back across his face, is softened with understanding. “She’s right. But—‘course, if you want your staff, go grab it. No rush.”

 

Withdrawing into the ship so she can strap the quarterstaff across her body and throw a satchel full of her essentials over her shoulder, she steals a few moments’ deep breaths and barks out some last instructions to 2BB-2 before ambling back down the ramp.

 

“Ready,” she tells Finn, with what she hopes sounds like confidence.

 

“Great!” He smiles at her reassuringly. With a robed arm swept out towards the temple, he announces, “In that case… welcome, Rey, to Master Skywalker’s New Jedi Order.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Finn is gregarious. He makes friends with ease, listening carefully to the comments and jokes thrown around by padawans and younglings and adults. It’s obvious people like him because he’s quick on his feet with a joke, a helpful suggestion, an encouraging remark.

 

Even the severe monks of Tuanul, whose sole purpose at the temple seems to be some sort of blessing or ritual involving droning prayer and the somber burning of desert sage, nod amicably to Finn as he leads Rey past them. Angmi never leaves his left side nor G3 his back, so Rey sidles up on his right, and tries to remember names as he points out people he knows. Here a cameloid H’drachi he met during the war, there a horned Devaronian male, crimson flesh marked with tattoos, to whom he was introduced by the Solos at some point. Someone he chatted with a few days ago. Someone he helped out, once. Someone who’s heard of him. He knows more of the people working on the temple than he doesn’t.

 

To herself, Rey wonders if his amiability comes from his years as a soldier living in close quarters with his compatriots. Is that his own form of defense, a residual piece of armor he still carries with him? In the guise of an everyman, after all, he cannot be singled out. She has seen holos of the First Order’s stormtroopers. Their uniforms are all the same, the breathing apparatuses of their masks all contorted into the same bizarre, gleaming grimace, just like those of the Empire before them. Compliance, conformity, and cooperation are key to survival as a footsoldier of the First Order. Or so she imagines.

 

But as Finn continues speaking— discussing some of the reforms he is working to pass, inquiring about her time on Batuu— Rey can see that he is singular.

 

As if she didn’t already know. He is, after all, the ‘trooper who walked away from the First Order and not only survived, but helped to bring them down.

 

She studies him when she breaks the news about Rose and Brixie, wondering if that is anguish she sees in his dark eyes, his sagging shoulders. If it is, it’s gone in an instant. He nods his thanks, then steers them back to talk of the future.

 

To Rey, he seems tired but driven. Focused. Hopeful, even.

 

Around the temple, things are surprisingly cheerful; many stop to wave to her and Finn as they pass. Some sing or hum. There is laughter and conversation, even as they labor.

 

Dark stones, each half the height of Rey and larger than a swoop bike, lay around in organized piles. One or two float disconcertingly through the air; the eyes of those that do the floating glow with power and delight. Others are not yet so seasoned, and simply work with their hands. It takes them a while to make their way around the temple’s base, and the morning sun blazes ever-hotter as it rises in the sky.

 

Eventually, a village of plasto-canvas tents comes into view. They were once white, she supposes, but are now the same desert sand hue as everything else.

 

“And in here,” Finn says, as he leads her to an unremarkable tent, just like all the rest, “are the Skywalkers. They’re excited to see you.”

 

“Me?” she squeaks out, utterly surprised.

 

Again, Finn’s face cracks into a wide smile. “Oh, yeah. Mara Jade’s been talking about you since I got here.”

 

And before she can question him any further, the woman in question has flung back one of the flaps of the tent and stepped forward, arms extended.

 

“Rey,” she says, beaming at her. “Welcome home!”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Of course, it’s not really her home anymore. That much is obvious to Rey, and cannot escape Luke and Mara Jade’s notice nor Finn’s or Angmi’s, for that matter. The entirety of what her life had become in the years since her family returned— Cratertown, the bar— it’s gone.

 

She cries no tears for its passing, and mourns none of it. Not even the home that she and her mother built. What was good about those memories— she realizes as she peers out at the dunes and the stones and the temple and its constituents, before joining Mara and the others inside the Skywalker tent— she has taken with her.

 

What was bad, too.

 

But the buildings themselves? Nothing more than wood and stone and ferrocrete and steelcrete.

 

(This is what she has discovered in leaving Jakku. The memories were associated with the place she had lived all her life, that much is true. But they were not completely tied to it. It does not matter where she travels in the galaxy— Chandrila, Rhinnal, Batuu, Bastatha— the memories both good and bad will accompany her.)

 

Greetings are exchanged with the Skywalkers. Then, after they have settled into soft foldable armchairs arranged in a circle upon the tent’s uneven carpeted floor, news is passed between them. In cryptic half-formed sentences, Finn and Angmi and Luke discuss the meetings Leia has been holding, to which Mara rolls her eyes and bids Luke to pour some iced tea for everyone. Once he’s done as she asked, she unearths a collection of old pulse rifles from somewhere and begins dismantling them for cleaning.

 

When night begins to fall some time later, Mara rises to light a few old-fashioned bloggin-oil lanterns. “You seem… happier, than the last time I saw you,” she says, in a soft aside to Rey, as she sits down again and pulls the intricate parts of her weapon back into her lap.

 

Rey casts a glance in the direction of the others, but they’re busy debating the morality of some knight who fought in the Second Sith War— even Angmi is leaning forward in her chair, hands slapping together as she articulates a point that has Luke groaning— so she turns back to Mara and nods.

 

“I am,” she says.

 

Mara inspects the super-conducting filament she holds pinched between her thumb and forefinger. “More confident too,” she adds. “Centered. In yourself, and—in the Force.” An auburn eyebrow cocks, indicating that this is a question.

 

In a whisper this time, Rey repeats: “I am.”

 

Now their eyes meet. Mara’s eyes shine emerald-green in the light of the lamps. She gives Rey a knowing smile, then takes a pleased sip of her tea.

 

“You’ve seen some more of Luke’s nephew, I might guess.”

 

The blush burns her cheeks, but she holds Mara’s gaze. “I’ve seen a lot of things lately. Old… and new.”

 

“Very good.” She can hear the approval in Mara’s voice. “Batuu is a planet steeped in the Force. A very good place for a vacation—for someone like us.”

 

Once, Rey might have pretended not to understand. She might have demurred, or fallen silent, or changed the topic. Now, she does not.

 

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, an agreeable sound, and buries her own knowing smile in her own tea, relishing the cool herbal parching of her thirst. Mara tosses her head back and laughs heartily. Then she throws a wink Rey’s way and resumes her replacement of dead filaments.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The discussion turns to plans for the academy and the students; there is the question of permanent housing for everyone if they outgrow the temple, locating other Jedi to help teach the padawans, how to feed them, and a thousand other logistical puzzles. Rey follows along, mostly in silence, offering suggestions where she can— based on what she knows of the environs— and gratefully accepts the bowl of rice pilaf with grilled koyo fruit offered to her at some point.

 

Her mind is elsewhere as she eats. When her bowl is empty— working on the suspicions she has had since their first meeting— she turns to Mara and asks softly: “You know, don’t you? About Ben and me.”

 

Mara smiles to herself. “Perhaps,” is her only answer.

 

“Have you… that is, this whole time?” Rey sputters.

 

Mara gives her a look. “Perhaps,” she repeats, at the same time that Luke cries out: “I thought it was all over between you two—what a crock of bantha shit!”

 

The conversation grinds to a halt. Luke’s outburst draws a shocked cough from Finn, who sits stunned into silence beside him, and an inquisitive look from Angmi.

 

“You might’ve said so,” Rey says lightly, choosing to reply to Mara instead of Luke.

 

“My beloved husband thought we should mind our own business,” Mara huffs. “He was convinced that meddling in his nephew’s affairs would end in disaster, and insisted that Ben would figure it out on his own. I have remained… less convinced of that. It’s been a matter of _quite_ some discussion between us, I assure you.”

 

Rey’s gaze pings between the two for a moment. “ _Was_ convinced?” she prompts.

 

“These days, just about all I’m convinced of is that poor Ben doesn’t know his ass from his elbow,” Luke grouses. “He came to see us a couple weeks ago—brought some supplies we needed for the construction of the temple—and he spent most of that visit either out moping around those old Imperial ships or in this tent, drinking all my tea and talking endlessly about _you_.”

 

The flush that heats her entire body is fearsome in its warmth and rapidity; she can only imagine how red she must be. “Saying…?”

 

“Oh, fine things.” Luke gives her a benevolent smile. “Very fine.”

 

“How did you know? About us?” she asks, trying to distract herself from the sound of her own pounding heart and the feel of Finn’s eyes boring into her, seeking answers.

 

“As I told you when we met, he’d dropped a few hints. We put the rest together easily enough,” answers Luke. “Didn’t even need to use the Force. He’s not really a subtle person, that Ben Solo.”

 

“Does that bother you?” Mara wonders. A shadow passes over her delicate features. “That we knew? That we know?”

 

Rey cannot be sure. She clutches at the smooth pearl hanging from her neck, and bites the inside of her cheek.

 

“We _did_ want to help.” Mara sighs. “We’ve always wanted to help Ben. But he’s—stubborn. Like his parents.” She shoots Luke a pointed look. “Like your sister.”

 

“Hey, it’s Han’s genes in there too. And _he’s_ the one who raised the kid!”

 

“I—I know that,” Rey interjects. “That you… meant well. I’ve always known that, I think. I could… sense it?”

 

Mara gives her a satisfied smile. “There really _has_ been a change in you, hasn’t there, Rey?”

 

“Yes,” she gasps. “I think there has.”

 

“I’d say we should celebrate with a toast, but all we have to drink around here is tea.” Luke frowns down at his glass, then raises it anyway. “Well, in any case—cheers!”

 

They all touch glasses with a light clink, and a moment of contemplative sipping ensues. Finn and Rey’s eyes meet and he shakes his head, bewildered. She has no good answers for him, so she merely shrugs. At that, he lets out a disbelieving scoff.

 

Redirecting her attention to Luke, she asks, “Have you heard of people—sharing dreams? With—or, using maybe—the Force? ”

 

Mara’s eyes slide back to her— narrowed, canny, seeing right through her. She smirks again then answers for Luke. “There are ancient texts on that sort of thing—on the Force. I could look through what we have here for dream sharing, if you’d like.”

 

“I’d appreciate it,” she murmurs, accepting that the rest of the evening will probably be spent with her cheeks aflame. She takes another deep swallow of her tea, in an attempt to cool herself off.

 

“Then consider it done,” says Mara.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And later, as they are bidding each other goodnight, Mara leans in towards Rey, her head tilted. Her crisp voice is hushed when she asks: “Are you upset, Rey? That we tore it all down? Cratertown?”

 

“No, no,” Rey rushes to assure her. “Surprised, maybe. At first. But—it makes sense, I suppose.”

 

“I meant what I said before.” Mara’s green eyes peer into hers, not a hint of mirth visible. Earnest. Serious, now. “This will always be your home, and you will always be welcome here. _Always_.”

 

Rey swallows, studying her hands. “Thank you,” she whispers.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“I’ve gotta jet,” Finn tells her, as he walks her to the tent that will be hers for the night. “Tomorrow, first thing. Headed back to Hosnian Prime—there’s still a lot of work to do.”

 

Rey can feel her brow furrowing, a frown of disappointment tugging her lips down. They stumble silently over the sand together; their path is lit a faint flicking orange by scattered campfires, around which sit Luke’s burgeoning first class of Jedi and the monks. Up above, the stars wink and glister, as is their wont. The moons have just begun to emerge from their refuge beneath the western horizon.

 

She’s thinking about masks, and soldiers, and the journey each of these budding Force-users has embarked upon.

 

The same one Finn is on.

 

The one they all must take.

 

The same one on which she has meandered all her life until recently; it has finally begun to sing to her, guiding her towards a path that feels true.

 

 _Centered in the Force,_ Mara had said. The stars are different overhead than they were on Batuu, yet they are familiar. They are the stars of her youth, and she does not feel lost. She _feels_ centered. And found. Very found. She wants that for Finn, too. In a more general sense, she wants that for everyone, including these beings who have wandered their way into Luke’s aegis.

 

“I’m sorry you can’t stay longer,” is what she finally comes up with. “I wish we had more time to catch up.”

 

He twitches his shoulders, a melancholy shrug. “Rey—”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Is she happy?”

 

The question halts her in her tracks, and she turns to find Finn has also stopped. He’s facing her, large eyes limpid and glistening in the distant firelight. He searches her face for a hint of an answer.

 

“She is.” She reaches for his hand. “And loved. I think—no, I know it—Brixie really adores her. They’re going to be very good for each other.”

 

A shaky breath, Finn’s, expelled into the rapidly cooling night air. The winds have died down at the moment, but they will pick up again soon; she can feel it.

 

“I’m glad,” he gasps.

 

She watches him swallow then look off at the tents and the fires and the younglings singing a jaunty little tune along with someone’s poor attempts at strumming the alluta. A moment later, he shifts back to her.

 

“I wish I could’ve been—something else. Someone else. Someone—more peaceful, maybe. When I first defected, maybe we should have run then. I probably would’ve kept running the rest of my life.” He shakes his head. “We… might’ve stayed together. But then—it had to happen how it did, right? Otherwise—who knows, what might have been. Just… I just wish I could’ve been someone better for her. Wish I could’ve stayed.”

 

“I’ve played that game before, Finn,” she says ruefully. “There’s no winning it.”

 

He coughs out a sad, wet laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. Ben Solo, huh?”

 

The sound she makes is somewhere between a sob and a giggle, and it borders on the edge of hysteria. All she can do is shrug; Finn nods in sympathy.

 

With a deep breath, she bids him, “Please take care, in the Senate. And don’t be too hard on yourself.” Now it is Rey who opens her arms in an offered embrace; he accepts it eagerly, bending slightly at the waist to hide his damp cheeks in her shoulder. “Promise?”

 

“I’ll see you again, Rey.” He straightens, sniffling softly. “Won’t I?”

 

“You will. But even so—promise me.”

 

“I’ll promise if you do,” he shoots back.

 

She feels his sadness keenly, but nonetheless musters a weak smile. “I do. That is—I will. Take care of myself. And… try not to be… so hard on myself.”

 

“Me too, then.”

 

And as she stares into his eyes, for one second, then two, she cannot help but think: _in another life, it might’ve been you and me against the whole galaxy. The two of us, unable to let go of the ghosts that raised us. It might’ve been a true friendship, truer than any I’ve ever known. Who knows? It might’ve been love._

 

“Try not to be too hard on Solo, either. He’s—he’s a good man,” Finn says.

 

She can feel herself starting to unravel, but she manages to get out: “I know.”

 

He sighs. “Okay. I should go.” He jerks his head back towards his tent, where G3 stands watching them both with laser-bright eyes that shine iridescent in the dim light. “Gee-Three loves harassing me when I don’t get a solid eight hours sleep.”

 

“Wouldn’t want to upset Gee-Three,” she mumbles, feeling raw.

 

“Until we meet again, Rey.” His smile is lopsided, still a little tremulous, but resilient.

 

“Until then.”

 

He turns with a wave. She watches him pitch forward, striding clumsily over the sand until he reaches his tent and disappears inside.

 

For a long time after— as she crawls into her own tent, as she tucks herself into her bedroll, as she rolls the pearl between her fingers, as she listens to the winds pick up— she thinks about Finn, and what is to become of him. Of the Force, she makes a request: _Let him find happiness. Please, by the holy stars, let him find his own peace._

 

Like a lazy river, her mind drifts towards other thoughts as it carries her off to sleep. Sacrifice. Choices. What-might-have-beens.

 

 _Fine things,_ Luke had said. The words come back to her, on a wave of nostalgia and yearning. The Captain had said _fine things_ about her. What should she make of that?

 

How can she speak to him again, and when? As she tumbles down into dreams, she resolves that she must find a way. She _must_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When she finds herself under the green-leafed uneti tree, the Captain holds her and attempts to kiss away her worries. He breathes _fine things_ against soft parts of her naked body, but it is not the _same_. It is not enough.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Finn is as good as his word. By the time she awakens in the morning, fingertips still tingling with the phantom touches she bestowed upon the Captain’s dream self, he and his retinue are nowhere to be seen.

 

 

. . .

 

 

After a quick breakfast shared with a few high-spirited youngling padawans full of questions for her about the Sinking Fields and the Fallen Teeth, Rey climbs into _Nightbloomer_ with an assurance to them and the Skywalkers that she’ll only be gone a few hours. Though Luke looks intrigued, Mara nods impassively, wishing her safe travels and a quick return.

 

The Captain’s yacht is a fine machine, so the trip out to the abandoned AT-AT— _Hellhound Two_ , her childhood home— takes mere minutes.

 

Unlike Cratertown, the troop transport vehicle remains just as she left it: dilapidated, out in the desert, slowly succumbing to rust and sand and sun. She sets the ship down as close as she can, and leaves its guarding to 2BB-2.

 

There is an impression in the back of her mind, an idea that has been nagging her from the moment her eyes opened this morning. Something she is meant to see here. Something she is meant to do.

 

Her booted feet sift into the fine sand, as difficult to walk as ever. The sun is already relentless, there is barely a breeze. Everything is bright blue sky and glaring hot sand.

 

And then Rey sees her.

 

A small girl is making her way out of the hole in the AT-AT’s hull as Rey approaches. At the sight of her— scrawny yet tall for her age, but not as tall as she might have been had she been raised with steady, proper nutrition, hair the color of caf lightened by a mere drop of cream, heart-shaped freckled face surprisingly pale for a desert-dweller, clothes grubby and ill-fitting— Rey jumps back in alarm, her hand rising to cover her open mouth.

 

It’s Rey.

 

A young Rey. So young. Humming to herself as she dons the old Rebellion starfighter pilot helmet she found in the desert. Curling up in the shade of the AT-AT’s footpad with a tin bowl of polystarch and veg-meat. Eating without thought for manners, sloppily and in great haste, barely pausing to swallow or breathe. When the synthetic foodstuff is gone, she licks out the bowl.

 

Rey watches on, paralyzed by her shock, her sorrow, her memories.

 

Staring out at the dunes once she’s finished, a forlorn look of loneliness and hunger and boredom passes across young Rey’s face.

 

The idea has occurred to her that perhaps she’s cried herself empty a few times over by this point, but now she is once again proven wrong. She does not fight the impulse.

 

She weeps for the girl.

 

 _Hellhound Two_ , like the buildings of Cratertown, is just scrap metal. It holds no more or less meaning than what she attributes to it. It will not last forever. But unlike Cratertown, Rey discovers at this very moment that she is willing to give it space in her mind, in her soul. She will mourn this place as she could not Cratertown or Ergel’s bar, just as she will mourn the future of this bright young girl.

 

This is where she was hurt and healed countless times.

 

This is where she learned what it meant to leave childhood behind.

 

This is where she became a woman.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says to the girl. “I’m sorry for what’s to come. I’m sorry for the hurt I caused you.”

 

The girl doesn’t hear her or chooses not to respond. She’s still humming softly to herself, but the sound has become an imitation of the starfighter engine’s drone. Her hands are raised as if she is flying a ship. Suddenly, she clenches one in a fist, and makes a soft ‘Pew! Pew!’ noise, imitating that of a laser cannon.

 

“I’m—I’m going to do better now. I will. For you.” Rey swallows heavily. “This life—it won’t always be like this for us.”

 

The girl continues playing make-believe, flying her imaginary starfighter against an imaginary enemy out somewhere that might as well be imaginary, for how much she knows of it. Vague memories of countless afternoons spent like this drift back to Rey.

 

There is nothing more that she can do for this apparition of the past; she cannot undo what has already happened. There is no weapon strong enough to burn it away, no ocean deep enough to drown it.

 

This, too, she must take with her. All she can do is find a better life, in the here and now.

 

“I promise,” she chokes out, backing away. Leaving the girl to the terrible years that lie ahead. “I promise.”

 

The girl plays on, all alone.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Mashra’s blue face wavers over the flickering connection; for a moment the projection jumps about, unsteady, and Rey stares at the plasto-canvas walls of her tent while she waits. Then it stabilizes and Mashra comes back into view. She’s scowling at Rey, large eyes steely and unamused, fleshy mouth appendages bouncing as she opens and closes her snout several times.

 

With their connection secured once more, she begins anew.

 

“Rey. You’ve had your fun, haven’t you? You’ve seen your sister, you spent an entire kriffing month on Batuu. And now, you mean to tell me, you’re back on _Jakku_? Why are you not on Bastatha, with Ergel and Verla, who, might I remind you, have been waiting on your arrival?”

 

“I’m sorry,” mumbles Rey, feeling cowed, unable to meet Mashra’s censorious gaze. “I just… needed some time.”

 

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough of it?”

 

“I suppose.” She chances a peek at Mashra and catches the Abednedo watching her intently. “I’m leaving for Bastatha soon. Really.”

 

Mashra frowns, unconvinced.

 

“Really,” she repeats. “Tomorrow. I will.”

 

“Hmph,” Mashra huffs. “Good. Well, now that I’ve discharged that unpleasant duty—I really don’t want to be hard on you, child, but Ergel has been quite bothered about your absence—tell me… what happened on Batuu, anyway? I’ve been hearing some very interesting things.”

 

Rey blinks. “What have you—”

 

“Brixie Dameron and Captain Ben Solo? If he’s messing around with _that_ girl, you truly did dodge a blaster bolt all those years ago.”

 

“What’s wrong with Brixie Dameron?” she asks, more loudly than she intends.

 

“She’s nowhere near a woman of your caliber, Rey. Flighty headstrong flirt, from what I hear.”

 

 _And where did you hear that?_ she wants to unleash. _From someone who doesn’t know her? What do_ you _know of Brixie Dameron? Or of caliber? The relative worth of two women?_

 

What she says, through clenched teeth, is: “Don’t speak of her that way.”

 

Another “hmph” issued. A beat. Then, chastened, Mashra goes on. “Alright. I’m sure she’s a very… nice girl. But I heard other rumors, too. Rumors involving you.”

 

“Which are?”

 

“Oh, that you were seen getting quite comfortable at the Black Spire Outpost with the senator of Batuu,” replies Mashra, “and that you have in fact journeyed all the way to Jakku to rendezvous with said handsome senator. A romantic assignation, some have said.”

 

“Nonsense.” She shakes her head for emphasis. “Finn and I are simply friends.”

 

“Friends who embraced only moments after you touched down on Jakku.”

 

“Are you spying on me, Mashra?” she demands, eyes narrowing.

 

“Looking out for your well-being,” Mashra corrects. “And not on purpose. I still have many friends on Jakku—friends that care about you, just as I do.”

 

Calmly as she can, she says, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

 

“Your mother—”

 

“Enough.” Her voice is stony, ice-cold. It throws Mashra into an indignant sulk.

 

Rey has to look away, angry and embarrassed and proud of herself all at once. The light is still bright even inside the tent, its fabric no match for the Jakku sun. Sweat pools at the base of her spine, under her breasts, in the dip between her upper lip and her nose. But she will not show any sign of her discomfort; not to Mashra.

 

The silence grows louder, heavier, inescapable.

 

“Ahem. Well. Well—I, er, well,” stammers Mashra, at length. “Yes. Well. Anyway. The reason I’ve called is actually Bastatha.”

 

Rey sighs. “I _am_ leaving tomorrow, Mashra, I swe—”

 

“Good,” the Abednedo interrupts. “When you get there, keep an eye on Corwin. I’ve been… hearing things about him too.”

 

She blinks, taken aback. The thought of Corwin had completely slipped her mind in the past couple months, in lieu of all that has passed between the Captain and Brixie and Gozetta and Poe and Finn and the Damerons. In lieu of the life she has been living, her own, at _last_.

 

“What have you heard, exactly?” she asks, then regrets it the second she’s spoken. If Mashra has heard untrue things about her and Brixie and _him_ , why should her rumors about Corwin have any merit?

 

But recollections of Corwin’s shifty-eyed grimace have sprung forth in her mind; the sudden pang of curiosity and anxiety is overpowering. She’s done her best to all but forget the existence of Bastatha, with its underground cities and its cartels; now she is forced to remember. Emotionally, she scrambles for anything that might keep her afloat during her stay there.

 

Even if it is just unfounded gossip.

 

“That he is attaching himself inextricably to your family, while serving as counselor and go-between to your father,” Mashra tells her. “As you well know, I was not excited about the thought of your father joining one of the cartels on Bastatha. But we both understood the importance of him gaining solvency, and fast. To that end, at least, I can say that Corwin has aided him. But now when I speak to Ergel, he shows no interest in ever leaving the dratted place! _‘Thanks to Corwin, I am quite established here.’_ He’s said as much to me!”

 

Weariness weighs down on her so heavily it is as if she is once more being pushed under the rolling surface of the Silver Sea. Wave after wave washes over her: of exhaustion, of dismay, of querulousness. So heavy is it, so crushing, that it takes her breath away. Leaves her feeling lifeless and limp.

 

“I see,” she manages. And she does; but she wishes she didn’t. She wants no part in these intrigues. Her regret over even asking deepens.

 

What she wants, desperately, is to take _Nightbloomer_ and fly to Chandrila or Hosnian Prime or wherever the hell the Captain has disappeared to, and speak to him. Ask him about the dreams. Ask him to touch her, in waking life.

 

“You’ll keep an eye on the situation once you’re there, I’m sure,” Mashra says primly. “And report to me if I must intervene? Although really, Ergel has grown so stubborn in his old age, who’s to say if I even can?” Rolling her eyes, she groans. “Still, we must persevere.”

 

“Yes,” she agrees, a reflex more than a sentiment. “Of course, we must.”

 

“Well then, I’ll leave you to your flight preparations.”

 

“Er, Mashra, one more thing.”

 

Furry hand held aloft, Mashra pauses. “Yes?”

 

“Are you familiar with the name Armitage Hux?” asks Rey. “I’ve tried to find more information about him on the HoloNet, but he’s oddly… absent, from most public records.”

 

“Hux… Hux…” Mashra taps her chin, then makes a little harrumphing sound, as she mulls over the name. “Ah! I do remember a Brendol Hux.”

 

“Yes, General for the First Order, died by poisoning suddenly, right around the time that—” she chokes for a moment, unable to finish that thought. Unable to say _his_ name. “Well. You know.”

 

“Ah. I—yes.” Mashra moves past the allusion without comment. “Very strange and suspicious death, I thought, though Plutt assured me that was just an occupational hazard for officers of the First Order.”

 

“Armitage is his son,” explains Rey, trying to jog her memory.

 

Mashra screws her face up. “Pale red-haired Human male, isn’t he?”

 

“That’s the one.”

 

“You know, I _have_ heard of him—in context with Jinata, the private security firm he took over after he left the military. In fact, I believe that Jinata was the _reason_ he left. It was widely believed to be, in any case. That was… oh, I don’t know. Not long after his father’s death, I should think.”

 

“Private security… what does that entail, exactly?” she presses.

 

“A kind of army, run for profit.” Mashra cocks her head. “Why the sudden interest?”

 

“I saw the man—Armitage Hux, that is—on Batuu,” she admits quietly. “He looked at me as if…”

 

A beat passes, in which Rey cannot think of a single word to describe the canny sneer that adorned Hux’s face.

 

“As if?”

 

“He knew me. Like he knew exactly who I was. Like—maybe he was trying to meet me?” She shakes her head. “It sounds like such rubbish. I’m sure it is. Only…”

 

Again she trails off, unable to fully identify the source of her suspicion but unwilling to let it go.

 

Mashra starts, wide round eyes going impossibly wider. “You know…”

 

“What is it?”

 

“A rumor, child. Only a rumor. But… I _do_ remember hearing, around the time the General died, that there were to be no arrests and no charges of murder—because there was a shocking lack of evidence at the crime scene. Only the conjectures of the investigators, but… not enough to go on.”

 

“Oh,” she says, reflectively. “Hm.”

 

“ _‘A master poisoner,’_ the lead detective ended up saying. And that, as they say, was more or less that.”

 

“Master poisoner? I had no idea there was such a thing,” she replies. “How strange.”

 

“Indeed,” Mashra agrees. “Since he left the navy, my impression is that young Armitage has kept his life very quiet. Private. No overt declarations of allegiances during the war that I can recall.”

 

She nods. “Thank you anyway, Mashra. I was just curious.”

 

“Rey…” begins Mashra, before hesitating. She snuffles, then shakes her head. “A man who makes a life for himself by profiting off of war is not the sort of man you should be associating yourself with. I cannot speak for his character, but… I believe you would do well to stay clear of him.”

 

Logic and reason tell her that this advice is sound; Mashra has her best interests at heart, surely. And she doesn’t disagree with her maternal figure’s advice. When it comes to Armitage Hux, there is much to be wary of, from the sound of it.

 

But she has been here before, and Mashra has given her this same counsel. The memory of it dredges up pain and resentment; bile churns in her stomach, and she balls her fists against the carpeted floor of the tent, hidden from Mashra’s view.

 

“I’ll do as I please,” she spits out, then swipes at a switch on the holoprojector; the projected image of Mashra’s appalled face fizzles away to nothing. Rey has stolen the last the word.

 

It’s less satisfying than she had imagined it would be.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She tries to keep the farewells succinct that evening. There have been too many goodbyes in recent history, and Rey is already exhausted by the prospect of all that life on Bastatha will entail.

 

Mara and Luke seem to understand. After the three of them have shared a quiet dinner, they promise to send her anything relevant they find in the texts, and remind her again that she can and should come back whenever she feels like it.

 

“I mean it,” chides Mara playfully, as she pulls Rey in for one final hug. “Come back and see us. See the temple. See what is to become of Jakku.”

 

“I will,” she swears, nodding at them both gratefully. “I will, I promise.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

At the heart of the Bastatha system spins a red giant, slow and bloated on helium and hotter than a hundred thousand of Jakku’s meager white dwarves.

 

And red, of course. So red, the furious final blaze of a star, ominous even through the phototropic shielding of _Nightbloomer_ ’s viewports. It casts a sickly blood-hued pall over the cockpit, making 2BB-2’s innocent visage and round blue form appear menacing as it beeps out an estimated timeframe for planetfall.

 

Rey sucks in a sharp breath when they swing round the star and catch sight of its lone planet.

 

It’s a dead thing, mottled with grey and white and black like the ashes of a fire that’s burned itself out. Or has been burned away, from the red beast it orbits. Clouds, she assures herself. Just cloud cover.

 

When they break into the atmosphere and hurtle down towards the jagged grey mountains and deep dark valleys, all bathed in red light, she is forced to reconcile herself to the truth: it is not some passing storm that lends this planet its ashen color. It _is_ deadened, plantless and riverless and lifeless on its surface, its air so overheated and according to their sensors, so rife with toxins, that not even an arthropod or arachnid can be detected burrowing within the topsoil.

 

She cannot feel the Force in this place, not like she could on Batuu or Chandrila. Not even like on Jakku. Her connection to it is still there but it’s faint, like one’s access to daylight when being smothered by a wet blanket.

 

“ _Atmosphere inhospitable, all life subterranean,_ ” reports 2BB-2. _“Except for some bacteria.”_

 

“No kidding,” she grumbles.

 

Voluminous geysers of black gaseous smoke rise up towards heavy, green-grey clouds like unsteady columns. Rey and 2BB-2 fly _Nightbloomer_ through one on their way towards Bastatha’s main docking bay and the tunnels; the smoke is dense enough that they lose all viewport visibility for a full minute, which causes 2BB-2 to let out an unsettled series of chirps and trills. Rey sympathizes; she cannot keep from shuddering uneasily, either.

 

Down they go.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The main access tunnel’s ingress point is a fathomless cave nestled almost entirely under the dead soil; it’s been blackened either by some drifting stream of smoke, or the sludgy air, or the heat, or the toxins. Which, Rey neither knows nor cares. So pitch-dark are its soaring walls, its rocky floor, its high arch of a ceiling— visible only by the glittering stalactites dripping down— that it is not so much entering a docking bay as it is like being swallowed by a monstrous yawning creature.

 

From what she can see of _Nightbloomer_ ’s hull from the cockpit, its polished silver has become just as grimy as the cave hangar into which she carefully navigates. It fills her with rage, irrational and impetuous, that _his_ beautiful ship should be so sullied. And for what? For Ergel and Verla? It’s unconscionable.

 

But her family is waiting and she has a promise to keep, so slowly, painstakingly, she flies on. Not a single living being works in the hangar, but there are droids about. They are clunky, clumsy, things— outdated mining droids; some fulfill their original purpose, performing further excavations on the cave, some have been refashioned to assist and monitor incoming traffic.

 

All are soot-black and lumbering.

 

They wield bright red beacons, red like the sun that has ruined this place, and after a comm station buried far below the cave scans Rey’s credentials and approves her entry, they wave her forward, into a narrow carved-out tunnel that gradually begins to slope downward. As she pushes the yacht forward, the slope steepens. Every few meters there is a dim, flickering yellow glowpanel, but the way is otherwise unlit.

 

She presses on; the angle of descent grows sharper.

 

And sharper.

 

They’re flying almost vertically downward— Rey belted into her seat, 2BB-2 using a retractable cable to keep himself stabilized, the tunnel around them so narrow _Nightbloomer_ is just barely able to fit— by the time she reaches the second docking bay, and actual civilization.

 

People dressed in bright yellow mimetic envirosuits and gloves and bulbous protective helmets wave glowrods at her, signaling to the illumigrid on the ground where they want her to land.

 

In short order, they inflate a plasti-shroud tent around _Nightbloomer_ , then comm her with instructions to lower the ventral ramp; the air in the tent has been purified, and she is safe to deboard.

 

No one greets her with any warmth once she’s done so. Nothing more is said to her than what is perfunctory. Her identichip is requested and checked, then an envirosuit is handed to her. She dons it brusquely under the watchful gaze of the docking bay workers, clicking the helmet into place with shaking hands. After she has retrieved her satchel and quarterstaff, and communicated briefly with 2BB-2 her hopes that he’ll find a way to see the ship cleaned while she’s in the city, she follows a envirosuit-clad woman towards an ancient, creaking turbolift.

 

“In,” is the only direction the woman gives her, in a voice distorted by her breathing apparatus.

 

Rey steps into the turbolift, then turns in time to see the doors slam shut behind her. There is no control panel within, no selection of floors from which to choose. She is trapped, for all she knows. Shifting uncomfortably inside the suffocatingly hot suit, she sizes up the durasteel-paneled walls, looking for a way out if needs be.

 

There is none. She tries to swallow down the panic that surges up the back of her throat without much success. Tentatively, she reaches out, seeking the Force.

 

Nothing. She finds only blank, sterile nothing.

 

The turbolift gives a mighty lurch, almost throwing her to the floor. And then, with a terrible grating groan, it begins to move.

 

Down, down. Further down she goes.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rey is met with a confounding scene when the turbolift finally stops moving and the doors slide open with one last protesting whine.

 

A blast of hot air greets her, hotter than the hottest afternoon on Jakku. Almost at once she feels herself beginning to wilt inside the unventilated versatex envirosuit; sweat is already beading at her temple, her back is half-drenched within moments. She steps out onto what appears to be a bustling main thoroughfare in a narrow, high-roofed cavern that stretches for kilometers in either direction.

 

Another tunnel. But this one, absent any familiar ghosts.

 

The thoroughfare is strange in its mundanity, in its normality. Yes, there is only obsidian rock overhead, and yes, all the light comes from hundreds if-not thousands of illumination banks that line the glittering dark walls, but there is also life. Everywhere, life. And commerce— shops carved out of the black walls, market stalls everywhere, vibrant life hustling to and fro, vendors issuing all manner of barked advertisements, and intriguing scents wafting out from tiny cafes.

 

And transports. Not in the numbers of Hanna City, but still— a steady flow of unhurried repulsorcraft pass overhead in two discrete lanes, mostly hoversleds carrying stacked crates of cargo and lightweight swoop bikes. Foot traffic and a few grounds transports rumble along the road before her; between the feet and wheels and tentacles and paws scurry hordes of beady-eyed mine rats.

 

No one is wearing an envirosuit. Many are actually rather finely dressed in beautifully ornate gowns and garments. But no one gives Rey a second glance, either. Abstractedly, taking all this in, she wonders if everyone must enter and exit Bastatha the same way. If Rey, in her bright yellow envirosuit, is a commonplace sight.

 

The last observation to hit her: Ergel or Verla are not in the crowd. She isn’t surprised; she would be more surprised if she did see them.

 

What does alarm her, however, is her capacity to still be hurt by minor slights such as this. Her family _knew_ she was arriving today; they could have easily come to meet her and guide her to their new subterranean home. They did not. To have expected them to do so was foolishness.

 

But there was a small, secret part of her that did.

 

With a twist of the helmet clockwise and a hissing release of pressurized air, she wrenches it free from the suit and inhales her first breath of Bastatha’s underground air. It is stagnant and fetid down here, smelling of sulfur, and iron, and ash, and ever-so-faintly of artificial ozone.

 

One breath is all she needs to know she hates it and always will. From her satchel she retrieves a coarseweave cowl Gozetta insisted on having made back on Chandrila; after it’s wrapped around her neck and face— not helping the perspiration, but utterly necessary if she is to venture any further into this putrid world— Rey tries to dredge up the memory of scents she has loved.

 

A field of delia pavorum blossoms. A simmering pot of Alderaan stew. The first fresh fruit she ever ate, jogan, like sweetened sunshine. The warm clean musk of a man who lay tangled up in her hammock with her.

 

How she wishes he were here to hold her hand now.

 

Biting the inside of her cheek and blinking back the tears that threaten to embarrass her, Rey takes shallow breaths through her mouth and steps out into the bustling street, resigned to asking the merchants and hurried passersby for directions to her family’s new residence.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Ah, there you are,” says Ergel placidly, without looking up from the datapad he’s holding, when the servant droid leads Rey into the cool, climate-controlled parlor. He’s lounging in an opulent armchair, gnawing his way through a bowl of spiced warra nuts. Reclined in a chaise lounge beside him, Verla does the same.

 

This vaulted chamber is, like all the others she has passed through in her father’s new sepulchral domicile, a space carved out of the planet’s mantle; windowless, its walls, ceiling, and floor have been sanded smooth and straight to resemble those of a standard terranean home. They have also been painted alabaster, perhaps in an attempt to counteract the oppressiveness of living so far underground without natural daylight.

 

 _Not that the red sun’s light would make things any cheerier,_ she thinks derisively to herself, as she looks around.

 

The furniture in this chamber is like that in the others, hewn from pale pink body-wood or Kriin-wood the color of midnight, all inlaid with intricate curlicues in buttery golden mythra or silvery beryllius, upholstered with lavish cream-colored velvoid. (All of this the servant droid has informed her in a dry, bored tone as it guided her towards the parlor.)

 

A palpable tension permeates the home, a sharp contrast between the hard mineral environs and the sumptuous furnishings used to camouflage that hardness. It’s off putting. This is not a place meant to welcome, or comfort.

 

It is meant to impress.

 

She has never felt so far from home, so uncentered, so out of place, as she does when she comes to stand in that parlor, staring down Verla, whose only greeting is the quizzical arching of a plucked eyebrow.

 

“Admiring the ambience, no doubt,” her father observes. “We’ve done quite well for ourselves here, as you can see.”

 

“Congratulations,” Rey manages to husk out, wrapping her arms around herself. The room is cold, far too cold. Unnaturally cold.

 

A chromatic chandelier hovers overhead, cycling through a rainbow’s worth of pastel lighting. Arranged tastefully about the room, gilded standing and table lamps add even more light; in addition to the stark walls, they make the room almost painfully bright. Somewhere, a hidden audio device plays a soundtrack of ocean waves.

 

Whoosh, swish, shurr.

 

Artifice, all of it.

 

“I see you made no effort to wash up before you got here,” Verla jeers, her sharp eyes raking over Rey’s sweat-stained tunic and leggings, boots that have clearly tracked Jakku sand onto their pastel tiled floor, her damp face, and finally her hair, limp from several day’s worth of flying without real rest.

 

In contrast, Verla’s ivory satyn gown is pristine. Her icy blonde hair, freshly dyed, is pulled back into an elegant chignon. Her face is painted in that way that is meant to look natural, and subtly enhance her beauty. It’s an effective ploy; she looks much younger than she did on Jakku. Dewy, almost.

 

Rey shrinks in on herself a little further.

 

From across the room, chuckling as he relaxes back into an equally expensive and uncomfortable-looking armchair, Corwin muses, “Now, now, she’s come straight from Jakku, hasn’t she?” His blue eyes spark with malevolence. “She’s a good daughter—good little desert rat, come in out of the sun at last.”

 

“Well, go and get clean, for edge’s sake,” commands Verla, her attention already back on her datapad. “And come back when you’re presentable.”

 

Ergel hums distractedly. “It will be good to have you here, Rey.”

 

“Really?” she asks, startling at that unexpected scrap of kindness.

 

“Oh yes.” He nods, still not looking at her. “Now we’ll have four at the dinner table. Much more agreeable.”

 

Verla scoffs. “Enough chatting. Go _shower_ , Rey—by the eternal core, you smell like a bantha lair!”

 

That is the extent of the welcome she receives. Rey turns back towards the doorway, where the servant droid has lingered, waiting for her. With an obsequious bow, it turns and rolls out of the parlor, leading her down a corridor she has not yet seen, painted just as immaculately white as all the others. At its end is a door. With a hiss, it opens as they approach, revealing a comfortably sized bedroom, furnished with a plush, canopied body-wood sleeper and matching dresser, a loveseat carved entirely from hard green jade, and another door that, upon being opened, leads to a private refresher.

 

“Your lodgings,” the droid informs her tonelessly.

 

The ‘fresher within is entirely dark black stone— walls, floor, counter, sink, the massive bathtub, all of it— gleaming and funereal in the sconced glowrods’ muted light.

 

“Onyx,” explains the droid. “A vein of it runs through the mantle in this part of Bastatha. Increases the property value tremendously.”

 

“I see,” she chokes out.

 

“Will that be all, ma’am?”

 

The best she can do is a strangled sound, which she hopes the droid will take for an affirmative. After an awkward second, it does. With another bow, it turns and retreats back to the corridor, bedroom doors hissing shut behind it.

 

Rey is all alone again. But this time, she _feels_ that way. Acutely.

 

The ‘fresher glistens darkly before her. In a mirror that has been set within the wall over the sink, her face looks back at her, waxen and drawn, like a ghost of herself. She frowns. The ghost frowns back.

 

There are familiar ghosts here as well, it would seem.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Rinnrivin Di has been such a gracious host and patron to us,” her father regales her at dinner, a few hours later. They’re seated at a long gleaming dining room table in another stark white chamber. One wall shimmers with a constant flow of water, a manufactured effect perhaps meant to add an organic element to the austere surroundings.

 

“We are _truly_ guests of honor, here on Bastatha.”

 

Rey sits beside him, bathed and dressed in one her nicer sets of tunic and leggings, her hair pulled up into her customary buns. Verla had given a begrudging nod of approval when she’d entered the dining room, momentarily appeased by her freshened state. Now, Corwin eyes her appraisingly from across the table as he chews his mouthful of nerf steak with gusto, like it might be his last meal.

 

She can’t stand the sight of it, so she lets her gaze travel, landing eventually on the hyaline veil pouring down the far wall. It makes a pleasant sound, much nicer than the piped in audio of the ocean. The sound is real, even if the waterfall itself is artificial.

 

It reminds her of happier days.

 

(Him and her, basking on a sunbaked boulder in only their swimming togs. Rey, attempting to unburden herself to him via Rose; him, listening intently with his eyes closed. Mist coming off the falls, whose roar mixes with the laughter of her friends. The memory of it makes her ache. How she wishes that day had gone differently.)

 

“Well? Rey? Aren’t you ever happy? You were the one who was _so_ concerned about us coming here, after all.” Verla stares daggers at her from the seat next to Corwin’s, fork and knife clutched in two balled fists. Rey spots all the signs that her sister is spoiling for a fight and cuts her off at the pass.

 

“Very happy,” she answers blandly, with an equally bland smile. “How wonderful for—us.”

 

Corwin leans back, throwing an arm over the back of Verla’s chair. The move earns him an arch smile from Verla. “Rinnrivin will like you,” he tells Rey, sing-song.

 

She can think of nothing to say to that, and elects to resume sawing at her overcooked meat in silence.

 

Sipping from a chalice filled to the brim with wine, her father smirks, then picks up where Corwin left off. “Yes, that’s right! You’ll join us when we visit him tomorrow, of course—we’ve been invited for a dinner party. Many of the high-ranking officers of his cartel will be there, as well as a few other choice politicians and businessman.” He smiles contentedly and nods at Corwin, who raises the piece of steak on his fork in salute. “All very important people. Naturally. They value me quite highly, because of my position in the Empire—as well they should. You wouldn’t believe the number of visitors we’ve had since arriving. And do you know how many people we’ve visited in return?”

 

“No,” Rey mumbles lifelessly.

 

“Not one!” Her father claps his hands together in victory. “We don’t need to do anything so pedestrian. All come to see us. Including—” he pauses, slapping his hand over his mouth, “—well, I probably shouldn’t say anything ‘bout that.”

 

“Oh, go on. You might as well tell her—she’ll meet him soon enough, anyway,” says Verla.

 

“Who?” she forces herself to ask, wondering even as she speaks if there is some excuse she can devise to free herself of this planet and these people.

 

“A mister Armitage Hux,” Ergel crows. “You know who that is? Very important man, girlie.”

 

Rey starts at the name, freed from impending despair by her astonishment. How small the galaxy seems, how full of coincidence. ( _How strangely the Force moves amongst us_ , she muses.)

 

Still smirking, Corwin adds, “Formerly a General. I knew him from way back in our academy days. Introduced him to the family. A felicitous connection, to be honest.”

 

“And now he’s the owner of a _very_ lucrative private security firm,” finishes Verla.

 

“He’s taken quite a shine to your sister.” Ergel raises his glass to that, then drinks deeply before continuing: “Visits almost every evening. Such a gentleman.”

 

“I think I know of him,” Rey says. “I think—I think I saw him on Batuu, at the Black Spire Outpost.”

 

Clearly unconvinced, Ergel huffs. “Yes, yes, maybe you thought you did.”

 

“I’m almost certain,” she persists. “Tall? Red hair, pale? Dressed in an expensive suit?”

 

“It might have been,” is Verla’s noncommittal response.

 

“It was! Really, I’m cer—”

 

“We just don’t _know_ , do we?” Verla bites back, with such vehemence that Rey’s mouth snaps shut. “Anyway, it hardly matters. He’s a friend of our family, particularly to _me_ , and you’ll meet him soon enough.”

 

“At the party,” nods Ergel. “You’ll meet all our new friends. And who knows? Perhaps you’ll even meet someone suitable… for… _you_.”

 

“Someone unpretentious,” says Verla, also smirking. “Maybe someone with… lowered standards.”

 

“Maybe,” Rey echoes faintly, feeling nauseous. She tries to dig deep within herself, searching for the confidence and joy she’d felt that day in the valley on Rose’s island, when she’d made the delia pavorum bloom. All she finds is her sister’s sneering face, the lifeless rock walls, and her father’s condescending tone.

 

Trapped, she is trapped. Trapped with her family, slowly being smothered by a dying toxic planet. She stares down at her steak, unable to eat.

 

“Speaking of lowered standards, how is our sister and that deadbeat pilot of hers?”

 

Corwin chuckles and gives an amused shake of his head while Verla bats her eyes at him, pleased with her own wit.

 

It’s a losing battle to keep her dismay to herself, but Rey does her best, replying neutrally: “She’s doing well. She and _Poe_ are—very comfortably settled on Chandrila. Right on the ocean, and they have a beautiful koyo orch—”

 

“Has she lost the baby weight yet? It’s been—what—three years, now?”

 

Verla’s painted lips curl into a cruel, satisfied smile.

 

“She looks beautiful,” mutters Rey, low and angry. “Healthy. Strong. And—happy. She’s happy. So are her children.”

 

Verla scoffs and rolls her eyes, but Ergel says, “Ah, the Damerons. Poe and his sister, what’s her—”

 

“Brixie. And Terena,” she grits out.

 

“Yes, that’s right, Terena. Flew for the New Republic, didn’t they?” Ergel huffs his displeasure at that before sighing, “Still, not a completely useless connection. They’re quite close with the Organa senator, you know. And… we must all forgive the foibles of youth, I suppose.”

 

She seethes at that, her mouth flattening into an angry line. With a loud clatter, she drops her fork and knife onto her plate.

 

“What about you, Rey? Got any youthful foibles that need forgiving?” Something about Corwin’s gloating tone and knowing smirk seem too purposeful, too pointed. Rey studies him, trying not to physically recoil.

 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she answers carefully.

 

“No secret dalliances with handsome Captains?” he presses.

 

She narrows her eyes, just about to demand he make his meaning clear, when Verla taunts: “Who, Rey? Please. Forget foibles—nothing of note has _ever_ happened to her. Just a plain old desert rat, as you said.”

 

It’s more than enough to tip her back into despair. It’s a step too far. It’s beyond cloying insinuation— it’s out and out cruelty.

 

 _Really,_ Rey thinks— as she wipes her dry lips with her napkin, emulating someone who has enjoyed their meal, then rises from her chair— _you should know better than to expect more of them, by now. The only one you have to blame is yourself, for entertaining the hope that they had changed too while you were gone._

 

“I’m very tired from my journey,” she declares, in a small broken voice. “I think I’ll excuse myself. Good night.”

 

With that, she turns on her heel and flees the room. She does not wait to see if her family will wish her a good night or sweet dreams; she already knows they will not.

 

 

. . .

 

 

To say that Rey is depressed by her first few hours on Bastatha is an understatement.

 

Bitterly do the tears run, as she lies in her palatial pink sleeper that night, half-sunken into the kesslerite body-conforming mattress. It feels as though the thing is trying to swallow her up, and the appropriateness of that— in light of her feelings on returning to her family and to this stifling underground prison— does not escape her.

 

She wants to call _him_ , wants desperately to speak to him for real, outside of the dream. The dreams are some small measure of solace but she wants more. She wants real life. She wants the vividness of their bodies breathing the same air.

 

It is only when she promises herself that she _will_ call him, that she _will_ not let her family crush her again, that she _will_ do whatever she must in order to leave this place— that she will do it for the young lonely ghost of a girl still haunting that rusting old AT-AT in the Jakku desert— that she is able to relax into sleep.

 

But when she slips into dreams, face still damp with tears, she does not arrive at the tree. There are no soft sweet nothings, there are no stolen touches.

 

She is flying a ship.

 

Not just any ship. A Corellian light freighter; she is flying the _Millennium Falcon_. And _he_ is beside her, in the co-pilot’s seat, flicking a switch on the subspace radio here, adjusting a setting on the control yoke there.

 

Feeling her eyes on him, he glances up. And then he smiles, a genuine beaming smile that stretches across his face, dimpling his cheeks and crinkling his eyes.

 

A desperate sob breaks loose from her. This is no memory; she never piloted the _Falcon_ with him. His hair is still streaked with grey and when she looks down at herself she discovers not the body of a half-starved nineteen-year-old but of a healthy woman well on her way to thirty. Strong, hale, fit.

 

Outside the cockpit is nothing but the twinkling of faraway stars. They’re drifting through space. And yet there is no sense of panic. Only peace. Only purpose. She can feel him in the Force, a bright warm light, and out there in the void, she can feel billions of other lives, like the soft safe thrumming of the pulse within her veins.

 

“Ben?” she asks.

 

“Ready?” he sends back, pulling her hand into his. He brings it to his lips, laying soft kisses along her bony knuckles.

 

In a breathless gasp, she answers, “Yes,” without even knowing for what. It doesn’t matter anymore, her dream self decides. Whatever it is, whatever is to come… she is ready.

 

“Okay.” He nods. “You want to do the honors?”

 

“What?”

 

He tips his head in the direction of the throttle, hair falling over half his face. “Punch it, sweetheart.”

 

Exhilarated, she reaches out…

 

…And her hand is still outstretched when she awakens, seconds later. It’s raised in the air towards the gauzy chiffon curtains that surround her, grasping at nothing.

 

Her face is wet. Not from the tears she cried before sleeping, she realizes, touching it absentmindedly in the darkness, but from fresh ones she cried while dreaming.

 

They were together, flying, happy. He asked if she was ready, and she was. Is. More than she has ever been in her life. And that is what makes the nothingness of this planet all the more painful. It makes the confinement of this strangely ostentatious home and the rankling company of Ergel and Verla more painful, too.

 

She considers the warnings Mashra issued in their last conversation about Hux and Corwin, and her family’s high opinion of both. Errantly, she regrets not seeking the advice of the Skywalkers about both men before she left Jakku; perhaps she can call them in the morning. But there is one opinion she truly yearns for right now, and one set of arms she wishes was holding her.

 

This place is not _right_ , and she is all alone. Furthermore, Rey is struck by the most terrible impression, as she lies in that overly-soft bed in her lightless bedchamber: in coming to Bastatha, she has moved backwards instead of forwards.

 

Down, instead of up.

 

Trapped, trapped, trapped.

 

And there is no one here she trusts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing good ever happens on Bastatha. Some notes?
> 
> Where is the [Kaliida Nebula](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kaliida_Nebula), [Balmorra Run](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Balmorra_Run), [Ryndellia system](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ryndellia_system)? Also, what's up with [Bastatha's sun](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bastatha_system_sun)? Also, what _is_ a [nebula](https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/nebula/en/), [red giant](https://www.space.com/22471-red-giant-stars.html), and [white dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf)?
> 
> What was the [Second Sith War](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Civil_War) and what [knight's](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Revan) morality might they be debating? 😏
> 
> Who are the [H'drachi](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/H%27drachi), the [Devaronian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Devaronian), the [Imroosian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Imroosian), and where does the name [Angmi](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Angmi_Lihosh) come from?
> 
> What is a [2BB-2](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/2BB-2)[astromech]? What is [XM-G3](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/XM-G3) [bodyguard droid]?
> 
> Animals! [Arthopods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthropod), [arachnids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnid), [mine rats](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mine_rat), [neebray mantas](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Neebray) and [dingories](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dingory), oh my!
> 
> What's a [hoversled](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hoversled)? Want a handy guide for the _Falcon_ 's [controls](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CJeV4.jpg)?
> 
> Rando stuff: [datachip](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Datachip), [bloggin-oil lamp](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bloggin-oil_lamp), [kesslerite](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kesslerite_lounging_chair), [chromatic chandelier](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chromatic_chandelier), [illumigrid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Illumigrid), and [mimetic envirosuit](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mimetic_envirosuit)!
> 
> Materials [so many materials]: [synthatex](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Synthatex), [plasticene](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plasticene), [plasto-canvas](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plasto-canvas), [plasti-shroud](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plasti-shroud), [versatex](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Versatex), [satyn](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Satyn), [kriin-wood](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kriin-wood), [body-wood](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Body-wood), [mythra](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mythra), and [beryllius](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Beryllius).
> 
> Foodstuffs! [Ambrostine](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ambrostine), [charbote root](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Charbote_root), [spiceloaf](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Spiceloaf), [nerf steak](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nerf_steak), [polystarch](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Polystarch), [veg-meat](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Veg-meat), and [warra nuts](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Warra_nut)!
> 
> [Pulse rifle](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pulse_rifle), very badass.
> 
>  
> 
>   
> [😏😏😏](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sacred_Jedi_texts)
> 
>  
> 
> And finally, what's an [alluta](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Alluta)?
> 
> Whew, there you have it; lots of notes this time around. Hope this chapter was enjoyable, despite the lack of Ben. Thank you for reading! 💓


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two. She had the advantage of him in the preparation of the last few moments. All the overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ACK. I'm such a space cadet, I totally forget to do two things: first of all, I must thank [Mixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afalsebravado/pseuds/afalsebravado) and [Trixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TourmalineGreen/pseuds/TourmalineGreen) even more than usual for their amazing help and support on this chapter. I wrote and re-wrote the damn thing a bunch of times, and they really helped me corral and refine it. They remain, as ever, the best.
> 
> And secondly, I need to share this absolutely beautiful and PERFECT [manip](https://raw-untamed.tumblr.com/post/184418198353/voicedimplosives-manip-for-one-of-my-favorite) done by [raw-untamed](https://raw-untamed.tumblr.com). It **so** captures the atmosphere I have been trying to achieve throughout this story, I just love it. Thank you again, raw-untamed! 💓

**42 ABY.**

 

She wakes. It must be morning, both because of the time blinking at her from the bedside chronometer and because the glowlamps in her bedroom have activated automatically. That same ocean soundtrack she heard last night is being piped into her bedroom, remote but inescapable. Rey stares up at the gauzy pink canopy overhead for several long minutes before talking herself into rising.

 

When she shuffles into the dining room, Verla casts a disdainful eye over the simple sleeping shift she's wearing. Her sister holds her tongue through breakfast, but when they’re finished eating, she leaves the room and returns with a therma-slice.

 

“It’s broken,” she says, shoving the machine into Rey's hand. “And Corwin loves his toast. Put on something presentable, then see if you can’t do something with it.”

 

So it happens that Rey sits perched on the beautiful but uncomfortable sofa in their frigid parlor, working on the broken therma-slice, when the former General makes his appearance.

 

Verla has reclined into the chaise lounge next to Corwin, the two of them gossiping breathlessly about some deputy in Rinnrivin’s cartel. Ergel grunts his amusement and agreement from time to time but does not look up from his holobook compendium of who’s who in the galaxy. He’s brushing up, Rey imagines, for the big soiree tonight.

 

With no more fanfare than the rushed announcement of his arrival by the servant droid, the man of the hour sweeps into the parlor and immediately crosses the tiled floor to Ergel, who has risen and stretched out his hand. They shake warmly, like old friends. Then Armitage turns towards her.

 

Any doubts her family might have inspired about misidentifying him on Batuu vanish; this is undeniably the same man from the Black Spire Outpost. Same dashing dark peacoat with a high collar that cuts across his cheek, same slicked back hair the color of polished copper, same tall thin form from which his crisp suit hangs, same pallid face, close-shaven save for neatly trimmed sideburns that bracket a cruel mouth pinched into a tight smile— all of it the same.

 

Once a General, now in control of his own privatized army and beholden to no one: Mister Armitage Hux.

 

While Rey has studied him, Armitage has been doing the same. He smiles. A shrewdness plays upon his features; his gaze is scathing in its calculated interest.

 

“Yes, she,” Ergel is saying, one hand extended towards Rey, the precursor to these words lost to her reverie, “is my youngest, Rey.”

 

She startles, confused, then replies, “Uh, Gozetta, Pa?”

 

“Ah right.” Ergel gives an indifferent sniff. “Gozetta… right. My—second daughter, I meant.”

 

“Our younger sister is so similar to Rey—that’s where his confusion stems from, I’m sure.” Rey looks to Verla and finds her fuming. Her tone is waspish, spiked with vexation. She’s clasped her hands together tightly in her lap; her knuckles have gone white. “Both of them are so… plain, you see.”

 

“I see nothing plain here,” Armitage retorts, stepping towards Rey. He pulls her hand free of the stack of therma-slice coils and metal plating in her lap. With a bow, he raises it to his cool, dry lips. “Armitage Hux. It’s an honor to meet you at last, Rey of Jakku.”

 

“Oh… uh, thanks,” she says lightly, pulling her hand back. “Nice to meet you too.”

 

“So, did you enjoy Batuu?” He settles beside her on the sofa; Rey stares beseechingly at her family, desperate for a buffer. They look on in varying manners of passivity. Corwin is smirking, Ergel seems pleased well enough. Verla looks ready to strangle Rey.

 

“I’m certain I saw you there,” he persists. Noticing Rey’s inattention, he glances to her family. “Did I not?”

 

“You did,” she affirms. There is some small part of her that feels vindication at the livid shade of puce that infuses her sister’s face, but it’s outweighed by her wish to be free of his notice.

 

“In Merchant Row. And then later, at Oga’s Cantina.”

 

“Yes.”

 

She returns to her work, an excuse not to meet his gaze. The distant noises of Verla and Ergel setting up a dejarik game on Ergel’s holotable reach her as if through a wall of carbonite, causing her heart to sink. Now? _Now_ they choose discretion and courtesy? They’re really just going to leave her and Armitage alone to talk amongst themselves? Figures.

 

“You were having a good time that evening,” he observes, subdued. He’s leaning in slightly; his breath is a rush of piquant cinnamon across her face. He wears a pungent cologne that smells of burnt sage. It might not have been offensive if he hadn’t applied it so heavily but as is, it makes the inside of her nose tickle.

 

As inconspicuously as possible, she begins to breathe through her mouth. “Yes,” she replies. “I was there with my friends.”

 

“A fitting place to be with friends. Especially good friends, as you seemed surrounded by… I myself was there on business.” An awkward moment passes as he waits for her to inquire further. The now-familiar audio fills the lull: _whoosh, swish, shurr_. When instead of responding, she remains focused on the nichrome wire-covered panel in her hands, he continues: “ _My_ business, that is. Jinata Security. Have you heard of it?”

 

“I have.”

 

“So you’re aware then, that we’ve just secured a contract with the New Republic Senate to maintain peace in the Outer Rim Territories?” he inquires, with unconvincing nonchalance.

 

She cannot disguise her shock. “You _what_?”

 

“But… your senator friend didn’t tell you?” His smile turns to a sneer, but only for a moment, a veil briefly lifted and then dropped again. “Finn, I believe his name is? Formerly a ‘trooper for the First Order, I hear.”

 

“That was a long time ago,” she grits out.

 

At the acid in her tone, he bows his head. “Of course. Who among us wants to be blamed for the sins of our youth?” He pauses, as though he is reflecting upon his own sins. Then: “I certainly do not.”

 

That is an opening if ever she’s heard one; she has been tempted to ask him about Brendol’s mysterious death by poison since the moment he appeared in their parlor and this is her chance. Just as she opens her mouth to do so, fully prepared for whatever consequences her tactlessness might bring, he cuts her off at the pass.

 

“And you had others in your party. Commander Poe Dameron and a… Captain Benjamin Solo, son of First Senator Organa-Solo, if I am not mistaken?”

 

She hums in lieu of an answer, dreading whatever he might say next.

 

“Very noble family. Skywalkers… technically.”

 

“Hm,” is her terse reply.

 

Armitage presses on, not getting the hint. “And are you close with the senator? Such a bright _young_ man. Protege of a Skywalker—how lucky! What do you think of him?”

 

“He’s a good friend.”

 

Without missing a beat, he muses, “I myself wonder if he’s seasoned enough to make the right choices for Batuu—the kind of choices that will allow the planet and its sector to flourish rather than wither away. That will keep _all_ kinds of businesses operating smoothly there.”

 

She presses the nail of her right thumb into the side of her pointer finger and uses the resultant pain to center herself. “We—haven’t ever discussed politics,” she lies coolly. “Or business.”

 

“Ah—forgive me, I am being intrusive.” His arm comes up to rest on the back of the sofa behind her but at the same time he reclines, corralling his expression into something less intent. Maybe trying to feign disinterest. It’s unconvincing.

 

“I am a curious citizen, nothing more,” he coos. “Apologies. I did not intend to make you uncomfortable.”

 

“It’s fine,” she lies again.

 

“I do wish…” trailing off, he eyes her for a moment before starting again, “I _did_ wish I could have joined your little party that evening. There was a great deal of laughter coming from your corner of the cantina.”

 

Rey peers around at the white windowless walls, the elegant furniture, the sideboard hewn from blush pink wood, upon which sits an antique pendulum chronometer, the quietly tinkling chandelier floating over their heads, its lamplight changing hue every minute or so, and finally, her family, who remain sequestered at the other end of the sumptuous chamber, engrossed in a game of dejarik.

 

Not Corwin, though. Corwin’s leering at her, his appearance predatory under the pastel lights.

 

When she turns back to Armitage, he purses his lips. “You looked so lovely,” he sighs.

 

“Thank you,” she manages. In an attempt to be polite, she gives him what feels like a rictus grin; her cheeks ache from it. “How did you and my father meet?”

 

“Our mutual acquaintance introduced us,” he replies. With a wary glance at the others, he leans in again and relates under his breath: “A somewhat regrettable attachment was formed between Corwin and myself, as a result of our fathers’ friendship during our Arkanis Academy days.”

 

“He mentioned that, I think.”

 

“Did he mention that he flunked out in the second year?”

 

Rey raises her hand to her mouth to hide how it gapes. “He didn’t!”

 

“Ah.” Hux chuckles. “That does not surprise me.”

 

“Why is the connection regrettable, though?”

 

His voice drops even further. “He is an… unsavory character, just between you and me. But well connected and thus not devoid of value. Sometimes we must make those kinds of sacrifices—I’m sure you understand.”

 

“I’m sure I do,” she lies, a third time, willing her expression to stay neutral. It’s no use; her brows draw down in consternation, an expression which does not escape Armitage’s notice.

 

“You disapprove.” His head is tilted, eyes narrowed.

 

Just then, the chronometer tolls out the hour; eight o’clock has come already.

 

He seems taken aback by its chiming. “How time flies!” he gripes. When he reaches for her hand again, she is unprepared and does not think to keep it from him. With a final dry kiss against her knuckles, he releases her and stands.

 

“I must be off,” he announces to the room. “I am—sorry, Ergel, that we did not have more time to speak. I only wished to say a quick farewell before I leave for Hosnian Prime, but I was distracted by your enchanting daughter.”

 

He ogles Rey for an excruciating second, gauging whether this pleases her or not. She forces another grimace for him. This satisfies him, and he nods.

 

She can hear Verla’s enraged scoff from across the room.

 

After Ergel has risen and shaken his hand, wishing him a safe journey in a simpering tone, and he has bowed deeply to Verla, who flushes with pleasure at being thus acknowledged, Armitage turns back to Rey. She cannot be sure if it’s intentional that he steps so close, far too close for her comfort. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s purely accidental.

 

Either way, he stares down his nose at her as he issues these parting words:

 

“My business takes me into contact with _so_ many politicians in Republic City. A tiresome lot, on the whole. They’re all very idealistic these days. Perhaps a touch overly so, but—oh, well. Time is the greatest teacher, I believe it is said. And there’s always the chance I might encounter that lively young senator friend of yours, Rey of Jakku.”

 

His lips curl into a mockery of a smile. “If I do, I’ll be sure to give him your best.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Do you know what? I think you’re looking much better these days,” says Ergel to Rey, apropos of nothing, not long after Armitage has departed. “You’ve got a… a glow about you. What is the product you’ve been using on your skin, girlie?”

 

Confused by the sudden interest, she sputters, “W—What? Nothing?”

 

Ergel shakes his head. “Slootheberry Wrinkle Creme, is it?”

 

“No, really, nothing,” she insists, trying not to laugh at this bizarre turn. “I—I haven’t—”

 

“Well you _should_ use it,” he cuts in. “I recommended it to Corwin,” here he nods at the grizzled blonde, “And of course he went and bought himself a year’s worth. Look what it’s done for him!”

 

Rey takes a minute to inspect Corwin. He looks almost exactly the same as she remembers him from the afternoon he wandered into the bar back on Jakku. Maybe a little less dehydrated. His skin is still mottled red, all broken blood vessels and sun damage; the evidence of a hard life is written across his face.

 

“…Thanks for the advice, Pa,” she murmurs, still just barely holding in her bemused laughter.

 

With a smug grin, he replies, “I’m your father, darling. That’s what I’m here for.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

An hour passes, then two. Boredom takes hold of her once she finishes fixing the therma-slice. Ergel is busy all morning entertaining the business partners who pass through their parlor; Corwin never leaves his side. Verla vacillates between ignoring Rey’s existence and glowering at her from across the room.

 

When Rey asks to borrow her datapad, her comlink, her holoprojector, some credits, _anything_ , her answer is a repeated vindictive refrain, delivered in a droll tone: “I’m afraid not—I simply cannot trust you not to steal _my_ things.”

 

So finally, unable to take the tedium and hostility and indifference, she retreats to her bedroom chamber, where she settles cross-legged on the hard jade loveseat. There, she tries to reach out for the Force.

 

There, she still finds nothing.

 

Her simmering hysteria waxes stronger. _Why is the Force gone?_ What is she going to do here? The disconsolation of underground life on Bastatha is beginning to tear away at all the progress she made on Chandrila and Batuu; one day in, and already she cannot think, cannot _focus_ , not when she is bored and trapped like this. Her mind feels like soft energy pudding, unwilling to comply with her demands.

 

With no cosmic guidance and nothing to look at, Rey asks herself: why does she stay? Why has she ever stayed? The reasons that once seemed so vital now feel hollow and arbitrary. Is this penance? Does she deserve this? Did she ever?

 

She finds that she is angry; angry at her own inability to leave behind the people who— she now knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, having experienced what it feels like to be appreciated and loved— do not care for her. Have _never_ cared for her. _Will_ never care for her.

 

And the worst of it, the thing that is so very painful that she can only admit it right here on this stupid awful loveseat, as bitter, lonely tears begin to spill over her eyelashes:

 

She does not care for them, either.

 

(That truth might have been overshadowed, once, by having her mother back. Not that she remembers much about who Hedda was before they left. But when they returned, Hedda had seemed to love Rey in her own faded, weary sort of way.

 

She blinks, her eyelashes sticky with tears. Hedda, who’d felt remorse for what they’d done to her. Hedda, who used to hold her and weep with guilt. She had loved Hedda, had forgiven her readily, had wanted so terribly to protect her from the inequities that life— and Ergel— had dealt her.

 

But Hedda is gone. Hedda has been gone for years. And whatever consolation Hedda’s belated mothering might have brought her in the past is a distant memory to her now, shrouded by the pain of losing the woman twice and in the aftermath, being exposed to years of her sister and father’s mordancy and indifference.)

 

So _why_ does she not leave these people whom she does not love? Why does she stay?

 

 _You know,_ says a small tucked-away part of her mind.  _You know why._

 

 _All this time, you never stopped waiting. First, for them to return. Then, for_ him _to leave. Then— once they came back— for them to love you._

 

Somewhere along the line, she'd convinced herself that these things were inevitable. And now?

 

She doesn’t know. Everything had been so clear on Batuu. All the answers, laid out before her. Moving forward had seemed so easy there, like breathing. There, where she was free. Nothing seems clear now, nothing seems easy, and Rey is so kriffing _tired_ of waiting.

 

But it is her crutch, her anchor. It has simply been a part of her, that patience, that waiting, for so long. _His_ fear, Rey remembers like she was experiencing it only yesterday, was of his heritage. The darkness, the ruination. If that was his weakness, this is hers: all her life, she has feared the truth… that she was forgotten and unloved. Waiting was the solution, the defense. She could not be abandoned if they were coming back; she was simply waiting for a return to the status quo. In times like these, when she is swamped by dismay or hopelessness, this is what she feels herself returning to, what she clings to. What she has always clung to. It might have drowned her again and again, but _stars_ , has she clung to it.

 

Her self-recrimination grows harsher. Where is the joy and resolve she found on Batuu? Where is all her newfound strength? _Who_ are _you, Rey?_

 

 _Leave me alone,_ cries that hidden, childlike voice. _I’m so tired. This is what I know. This is safe._

 

It is this voice, this _terror_ , she now understands, that permitted Mashra’s words to sway her, back when she was young and naive and frightened of an uncertain future. Her fear of the unknown. Or truer yet: her fear of the _known_.

 

Because Rey knows all this; she has always known all this. But to admit it is to let the pain in. And there is so much pain.

 

Staying does not feel safe to her anymore; it feels like suffocation. He is out there. Her friends are out there. A sister who cares about Rey— albeit in her own way— is out there. How can this be safe, or right, when that truth exists?

 

“I tried,” she pledges aloud, to the memory of her mother, to her young self. Her voice is dull and stifled in the stuffy bedroom chamber; the jade is unforgiving against her behind. “I’ve tried for so many years to love them. To be patient, to wait for them to love me.”

 

Sobs wrack her body, through and through. They leave her weak and shuddering, wanting only to be away. To be with _him_. To be free, and safe, and loved.

 

“I did _try_.”

 

For too long, she has blamed herself for this failure: that loving them, that waiting for them, that hoping that they would come to love her as they should, that _all_ of it has never amounted to anything. Compounded with the loss of him, her own decision, she had been left convinced of her own deficiencies, her own ineptitude.

 

She has castigated herself again and again for allowing Mashra to persuade her to reject him; she has held these unhappy truths within her heart, and rejected all the majesty and wonder of the Force, of life itself. There has been so much blame. So many tears, so much pain, so much waste.

 

But was it _all_ a waste? It was painful, but did she not keep her promise to her younger self? Did she not learn a lesson, even if it was learned through suffering?

 

Is she not stronger and wiser and more sure of herself now at twenty-seven than she was at nineteen? Has the Force not returned to her? Has she not seen him, and survived him, and found that what once tied them together is not dead, as she has for years believed?

 

Rey inhales. She wipes her tears from her face. She rises, she looks around the luxuriant bed chamber, and she lets out that breath.

 

 _Altered beyond recognition,_ she reminds herself. _You are more than what you were._

 

She thinks about the promise she made to herself on Jakku; she stretches her limbs, feels her muscles respond eagerly. 

 

_Go on, scavenger. Scavenge this._

 

 

. . .

 

 

The chronometer in her room reads 11:11 by the time she settles on a plan.

 

Without informing anyone, without asking for permission or counsel, she packs her satchel and strides out of Ergel’s home with no intention of ever returning. No one stops her, no one even notices her leave.

 

The grandiosity of the dwelling’s exterior matches the interior; it is guarded by twin Kintan strider beasts sculpted from milkstone, smooth pale Kuati marble columns, and an Obsidian cornice and frieze, intricate scenes of Galactic Imperial history carved into its gleaming black surface.

 

Rey could spit on it, she hates all of it so much.

 

After a quick look around— to either side of Ergel’s, more ostentatious facades jut out of the walls of the dimly-lit tunnel, a slightly narrower arm branching off the cavernous main thoroughfare— she turns towards the faint sound of bustling traffic and voices.

 

Then she hurries forward. Towards freedom.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The mimetic envirosuit given to her on arrival is just as oppressive as before, but don it she must. Once it’s on, Rey steps into the jolting turbolift and begins her ride back up to the secondary docking bay.

 

Only to find his yacht is not there.

 

How her stomach drops with horror at the sight of the empty illumigrid where she’d landed _Nightbloomer_.

 

_His yacht is not there._

 

She thinks she might be ill.

 

“Undergoing routine deep-cleaning and repairs recommended to us by your Beebee unit,” one of the bay’s mechanics informs her impassively, when she asks after it in a panicked bark. “It’s with him—in pieces right now, down in the maintenance bay—and won’t be ready for flight for at _least_ another two weeks.”

 

Rey has always known she was trapped only by her own refusal to leave her family, but in the back of her mind, the option to leave was ever-present. Yes, it had been a last resort. Yes, she has fought for years against the urge. But it was still her failsafe maneuver.

 

And for the next two weeks, that failsafe has been taken from her. She does not thank the mechanic. Mutely, unable to give voice to the depth of her despondency, she spins on her heel and marches away, stomping in an effort to keep from crying. To find an outlet for her useless rage and panic. Left with the choice of hijacking a ship or returning to her family, Rey makes herself to walk back into the turbolift. Her feet drag behind her with each step. Down she goes, once again. Back to _them_.

 

But by the time the turbolift reaches its destination, she has already begun to plan once more.

 

 

. . .

 

 

There’s no hurry, now. So Rey loiters a while in the central tunnel, wandering aimlessly around the main commercial hub. She ducks into high-end boutiques and shops whose hard onyx walls gleam under their tasteful lighting, snagging a free sample of Huttese lard-butter here and a zoochberry dumpling there, rubbing the luxurious fabrics of countless garments between her fingers with longing, striking up conversation with anyone who offers her a kind word.

 

Procrastinating the inevitable, considering her options, trying to suss out this world in which she has been trapped.

 

She passes several casinos and pauses before each, wondering if she could somehow negotiate a loan. If she could just get her hands on a few ingots, she might be able to turn a profit in a game of dejarik, or maybe use a few card tricks Gozetta showed her and Brixie during their journey to Batuu…

 

 _No,_ she reproaches herself each time. _That is your father’s vice. It won’t be yours._

 

And then she stumbles upon it— nearly hidden by a row of refined, stylish cafes— in a small tunnel that veers off from the main drag: a dingy, threadbare shop, noticeable for its lack of decoration or style. The sign hanging out front is shabby and illegible, the paint on the storefront chipped and its metal underneath rusted.

 

Through the shop window she spies an elderly woman seated upon a ratty armchair; on her lap sleeps an old voorpak. She is Human, maybe— she appears to be so— but a steel band is strapped across her face, hiding her eyes and brow from view. White hair curls around her face in tufts, and her gnarled hands pass over the voorpak’s grey fur in slow, steady strokes.

 

She smiles at nothing, alone in her dusty shop. Her countenance is friendly. At least, what Rey can see of it is friendly, friendly enough that she’s drawn in by it, crossing the threshold before she even realizes what she’s done. The voorpak sits up as she enters. Glowing eyes wide and fearful, it begins to bark.

 

“Hush, Teensy, that’s enough!” cries the woman. At once, the voorpak’s yapping turns to a contrite whimper. She pats its head gently and it settles back down on her lap. “Sorry about that,” she says to Rey. “Don’t usually get a lot of customers at this time of day.”

 

“What—is this place?”

 

“Consignment shop. I buy old things—all sorts of old things, as long as they’re in good enough shape. You got something old to sell me, young lady?”

 

There is laughter in the woman’s voice, like she’s in on some joke Rey has missed. She seems utterly at ease in her chair with her pet, making no move to stand or assist her, so Rey peers around at the shelves upon shelves of old ship components, machines, com devices, appliances, and other miscellania. In the far corner stands a rack of outdated and unfashionable clothing. The walls are covered with artwork, the likes of which she has never seen: paintings meant to depict Humans, perhaps, but featuring bright colors and sharp-edged cubed shapes instead of realistic figures, and conversely, complex tapestries relaying scenes of war and daily life with stunning accuracy.

 

It’s a charming sort of place; she is reminded of the collection of random things she’d salvaged in childhood to make her AT-AT feel homey, and cannot help but smile.

 

“If you don’t, that’s alright,” she hears the old woman say. “You can hide in here for a while if you need.”

 

There’s a knowing edge to that comment that sparks Rey’s interest, but the woman merely smiles in her direction and continues petting the voorpak.

 

“Maybe,” she says, with a shrug. Drifting towards one of the shelves, she inspects the odd collection of machinery. It is there that she finds it, tucked behind a turbo-blender and a droid capacitor: a holocam and holoprojector set.

 

If she can’t leave Bastatha, at least she can have contact with the people who care about her. At the very least, she deserves that.

 

She could call _him_ with these. They could speak, really speak. (She just needs to find out where he is, first. But surely Rose or Gozetta will help her with that. Or Finn, if she can get a hold of him. Luke, even, might finally be willing to interfere a little on her behalf.)

 

“I’d like to make a trade,” she tells the woman.

 

“What do you have for me?”

 

Rey sets her satchel on a nearby counter and rifles through its contents, trying to find something of value. It’s mostly clothes and souvenirs and worthless supplies; she doesn’t even consider the Bespin postcard carefully tucked into one of the inner pockets, nor the dried nightbloomer blossoms folded between two pages of her sketchbook. She’ll never sell or trade those.

 

“That Nabooian night pearl hanging from your neck, perhaps?” The woman chuckles to herself. “No, too personal—it’s not for sale, I’d wager.”

 

 _How could she see that? How could she have known?_ Aghast, Rey whirls back and finds the woman still beaming at her.

 

“How did you—”

 

“Just as you can see what is not there,” is her explanation, “I can see what _is_. Neither of us need eyes for such things.”

 

Completely stymied, Rey opens and closes her mouth. And as if sensing the question at the tip of her tongue, the woman clarifies: “I happened to be born without them, as all Miraluka are.”

 

“Are you talking about the Force? Is that how you… see?”

 

“What _else_ would we be talking about?” the woman sends back, fully laughing now. “Is it not the thing we share?”

 

“I… I suppose?”

 

“I can see you in the Force. And I can see the Force around you—a radiant light. You are… lost right now, and you cannot find it yourself. Basatha is a hot, dead thing, I know. It can be painful here for those like us. Too hot, too dead. And it will not help you find the Force, as some planets might… but _I_ will.”

 

“Yes,” Rey gasps, not caring if it’s a lie, not caring if the woman is a charlatan. “Please—please help me.” She drops to her knees in front of her, hardly even noticing when the voorpak scooches forward to sniff at her, nor when it licks a long wet stripe up her cheek.

 

“Rude, Teensy,” scolds the woman, still sounding amused. She takes Rey’s hand in her own; her skin is paper thin and soft, like the delicate wings of a sand moth.

 

“Close your eyes. In the past you have drawn on that which is outside yourself and that which is within—now you must seek _only_ within. Search yourself.”

 

Rey does as she’s instructed. A moment passes, two, three; maybe an hour stretches by, maybe two. Her knees begin to ache, the strained muscles of her thighs scream out in complaint. Still she searches.

 

And then: there. In the dark— an ember, a spark, a blossom, very nearly buried. Relief floods her; she has not been abandoned. Yes, she has taken her pain and her hard lessons with her. Yes, she will carry them all her life. But also this: the Force.

 

“Oh,” she sobs. “Oh, thank the stars.”

 

“There, there,” says the woman. “See? You’ll be alright. You’re not dead, are you? If you’re not dead, then it’s not over. Even if you _are_ dead, it’s not over.”

 

At a loss for words, exhilarated and exhausted, Rey laughs. “It’s not over,” she repeats softly.

 

“Ahem. A little louder, if you please. Like you mean it.”

 

“It’s not over!”

 

“No, it is not. Now, you whose light shines so brightly—what have you got to trade for that holoprojector?”

 

For a minute, Rey contemplates the contents of her satchel. Then she rises and crosses back to the counter. She pulls out a gown she has not worn in months, its silvery shimmersilk and lustrous jet-black synthfur just as regal now as the one depressing occasion on which she wore it.

 

“This?” she offers tentatively.

 

“Oh-ho, is that _shimmersilk_?” the woman laughs. “You have yourself a deal.”

 

Her smile grows wide, baring a mouthful of grey teeth and a web of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. It is a pleasant, amiable smile. She looks like a grandmother, or how Rey has always _imagined_ a grandmother would look. Calm resolve settles within her.

 

It’s not over.

 

 

. . .

 

 

 _Gozetta will be irritated_ , she thinks to herself, as she moseys back to Ergel’s dwelling. _But she’ll forgive me in time._

 

It’s Gozetta’s way, something Rey understands now after having gotten to know her better; quick to anger, quick to forgive. A flaw, maybe, but one she deems endearing rather than malicious. Especially in light of the reception she’s received on Bastatha.

 

The truth hits her like a strange wind blowing in from the north: she misses her sister. Misses her for her moments of insecurity and neediness just as much as she does for her moments of tenderness and grace. Misses the trust and friendship they were just beginning to truly establish for the first time in their lives.

 

As the shimmersilk dress is the reason she even _has_ the holoprojector now, and the dress was paid for by Gozetta— and unwittingly, by Poe— it is to her sister that she makes her first call, once she has locked herself inside her bedroom, letting the teasing questions from Corwin that follow her down the corridor go unanswered and ignored.

 

“Goz,” she says breathlessly, when her sister’s face flickers to life in front of her eyes, all in shades of blue. “Oh, Goz, there you are.”

 

“Well obviously.” Gozetta rolls her eyes. “Where else would I be? Are you _terribly_ sick of Bastatha already? How are Pa and Verla?”

 

Rey shakes her head, her lower lip wobbling. She hadn’t realized the mere sight of Gozetta would affect her like this. “Let’s not talk about Bastatha.”

 

“Hmph,” snorts Gozetta. “That bad, hmm? Have they asked about me? Probably just to make fun of me for my weak constitution, as if that’s my fault—”

 

“I _miss_ you!”

 

The words are not meant to come out in a heartbroken wail, but that is how they strike Rey’s ears. She cringes, but Gozetta’s expression shifts from the usual petulance into something sharper and more astute. And then into something shockingly compassionate.

 

“It must truly be bad then. I didn’t hear from you once while you were still on Batuu—now, don’t interrupt me, I’m not scolding you even if I _was_ rather hurt as I’d thought you would call. But I’ll be the bigger person.” Here she pauses long enough to release a put-upon sigh. “It’s fine, Rey. It’s fine! Anyway, Brixie kept me updated—we’ve called a truce you see, after that awful journey to Batuu. And now you’re suffering so I suppose I must forgive you.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and begins to tear up in earnest.

 

Gozetta flinches. “Oh… oh, don’t cry, Rey. I was only—I’m—don’t, don’t cry. I’m not angry at all, see?” She forces a quivering smile, but her eyes have begun to well with tears as well. “No, you mustn’t cry because if you do then I shall, and my makeup is already all done up for dinner at the Great House tonight.”

 

“So—sorr—”

 

“Hush, hush. What of my makeup?”

 

A hysterical bleat, inspired by her sister’s ridiculousness, breaks through her misery. She sniffles, then manages: “You look lovely.”

 

“I know.”

 

Gozetta’s gaze is frank, her mouth set in a straight line. Her delivery is dry as dust. And when Rey laughs again, Gozetta laughs along with her.

 

“Ergel and Verla are lucky that I am in such poor health or _I_ might come to Bastatha and give them a piece of my mind for treating you so abominably cruel,” she says, at length. “And here I was thinking you’d called to share some happy tidings with me!”

 

Before she discern her sister’s meaning, Poe appears alongside Gozetta, bent in half, his arms full with Weir and Little Poe giggling upon his back, riding his father like a steed.

 

“Hi, Rey,” he says, deadpan.

 

“Hullo, Poe,” she groans, mortified. “Sorry you had to witness that.”

 

“Eh, we all have bad days, right?” He shrugs. “We miss you over here. Don’t we, guys?”

 

Weir and Little Poe let out a riotous cheer, along with demands that she return immediately and bring sweets with her.

 

“Yeah, how ‘bout that? Gonna come see us again soon?” he asks.

 

She smiles, heartened at the way Gozetta dimples up at him while he speaks. “I’d very much like that.”

 

“Hey, did Goz talk to you about—”

 

“Wait, wait!” Gozetta flails at him. “Don’t! I was getting to it!”

 

“ _Gozetta_ ,” Poe chides.

 

“I’ll tell her,” she sniffs. “Now give me a kiss and take the boys outside.”

 

“Yes, ma’am,” he laughs, and does as she says.

 

For a moment, both sisters watch each other, waiting as Poe ambles off towards the door, Weir riding his feet and Little Poe his back. Rey drinks in her sister’s face, so much like her own— a little rounder, a little more youthful, yet still familiar in that eerie way the faces of kin are— and she detects a hint of nervousness.

 

Of guilt, maybe.

 

She takes a deep, fortifying breath. “What is it, Goz?”

 

It all comes out in an anxious rush. “Poe and Brixie and Finn told me about you and Captain Solo because despite popular belief I am _not_ actually a complete idiot and I’ve long suspected something was happening between the two of you—definitely on Batuu—and even before then so I made Poe call Brixie and then Finn and between the two of them we got the whole story and I’m sorry for snooping but really I _am_ your sister and I was going to scold you for not telling me yourself but now I suppose I can’t…” she pauses just long enough to suck in a lungful of air before adding, “Can I?”

 

“No,” sighs Rey. “I don’t think you can or should.”

 

“Very well.” Gozetta’s expression turns thoughtful. Perhaps a bit woebegone. Rid of its teasing petulance, her voice is muted when she says: “We never really… that is, before on Jakku, we weren’t… close. Like sisters, like friends.”

 

Rey grimaces. “Not really, no.”

 

“I… would like that for us.” Her sister’s nose is upturned, as if she is stating a controversial opinion and bracing herself for blowback. “I want to be the kind of sister in whom you confide about these sorts of things. It was—it was never that way between Verla and I when we were growing up.”

 

“I want that too.” Rey swallows. “I—I just—”

 

“What?”

 

In a rough whisper, she says, “I barely knew you, before I came to Chandrila. When we were all together in Cratertown, it seemed like… like… like it was all of you against me.”

 

Gozetta goes very still. She sniffs, an offended noise. “I see.”

 

“I’m so sorry, I—”

 

“No.” Gozetta’s shoulders droop, her head hangs down. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. But Rey…” she sighs, leaning her chin in her hand, “You’ve always been my hero. Ever since I can remember, I wanted desperately to meet you. And then I _did_ , and you were even better than I’d imagined you would be. You were… a marvel. So strong. So—so—so good. You were good in a way only Ma had ever been. Not that it did her any favors. Nor you.”

 

“I… oh.”

 

Rey is crying now, and she does nothing to stop it. Because maybe Gozetta is right in one respect, and wrong in another. Maybe Rey is like her mother, although they barely had enough time together to learn that. But maybe… maybe it has done her some favors, that supposed goodness she possesses. Maybe it has brought her sister back into her life.

 

Maybe, she lets herself muse, it has brought someone _else_ back, too.

 

Let the tears come. They are not wrung from sorrow now.

 

“I love you very much, you moof milker,” says Gozetta, in a tone both reproachful and affectionate. “Even if you _did_ keep your whole sordid romantic history from me! And… you’ll come back to Chandrila soon, won’t you? My health seems to improve whenever you’re around. If I had _my_ way, you’d move in with us.”

 

Through her tears, she smiles. “You know what, Goz? I just might.”

 

“Good.” Gozetta bobs her head, a prim little nod.

 

“And I love you too,” Rey adds. “Moof milker.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“No, no you don’t need to form a rescue mission,” Rey insists soothingly, holding up her hands in an attempt to assuage a very dubious-looking Rose and Brixie, about five minutes into their holocall. They are next on the list of people with whom she's longed to speak, and she is able to do so thanks to Gozetta, who has been kind enough to pass on Brixie’s authorization codes.

 

The women wear delicate crowns of blue and white blossoms, their concerned faces awash in bright light; it’s clear that they’re sitting outside, probably under some budding tree or in a field of wildflowers. It’s a miracle, really, that they’d chosen to bring any com devices with them at all.

 

Rose glowers at her, furious and ready to fight after Rey has caught her up on the Skywalkers’ admission about _him_ and the welcome she’s received in Bastatha, but after a moment, she concedes:

 

“…Fine. But we’re not gonna do _nothing_ , so here’s what we’ll do. We’ll get to work on tracking down Solo, because you two are _long_ past overdue for a conversation.” She quirks a brow at Rey, prepared for a challenge. When Rey merely nods, she smirks. “And we’ll institute a standing holo date until we can get you the _kriff_ out of there.”

 

“Thank you,” Rey says, softly, on a deep relieved exhalation. “I would be… very happy, for both of those things.”

 

“Just don’t forget,” is Brixie’s strident reminder, “You are _not_ alone. We love you, and there’s no way we’re going to let you suffer there for long.”

 

“Thank you,” she repeats, almost to herself, marveling at how life has improved in the span of a couple hours. “Thank you so much, you two.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“A Force vision,” Mara sighs pensively, once Rey has obtained their authorization codes and contacted them. The signal is terrible, their faces flickering and fuzzy. But the audio is sufficient; decent enough for Mara to explain what she’s found in the ancient Jedi texts she and Luke have in their possession.

 

“Usually, it’s of the future—but it could be a concurrent vision, even a shared one. And there’s hardly a time when you’re more receptive to the Force than while you’re sleeping. Your mind is completely relaxed, completely open. If you’re sharing dreams with someone, chances are that wherever they are, their nocturnal schedule has synced with yours. But—”

 

“But?” prompts Rey, apprehensive, wishing the answer could come without caveats. “But what?”

 

“Force visions are something accomplished by very strong, very powerful users,” Luke says, picking up where Mara left off. The image is so bad, Rey can barely make out his shaggy grey-blonde hair or bearded face. “Sharing those visions seems, from what we could find, to only occur when the two have entered into a Force-bond. Happen to know anyone you might be bonded with through the Force, Rey?”

 

The blush is aggressive and it burns her cheeks like few blushes ever have. And then bashfulness is gone in an instant; that Luke would tease her about this when he damn well knows the answer leaves her sputtering and furious.

 

“You know,” she accuses him. “All this time you’ve known. And you couldn’t—couldn’t—”

 

“Help?” If she’s not mistaken, that’s a grimace on Luke’s face. She’s almost positive Mara is frowning. Another sigh; Luke or Mara’s, she can’t be sure. Then, from Luke:

 

“Ben is so much like his parents. At least, he was before the war. Couldn’t tell him anything. Tell you the truth, kid, most of the times I’ve spoken to him since he got back, it’s been about you. I thought about it—telling you, intervening somehow—but whenever I talked to Leia, she told me to butt out. ‘Let him make his own mistakes, and learn his own lessons,’ she kept saying. Hard to argue with that.”

 

“You could’ve said something, at the very least,” replies Rey, her voice small.

 

“We could’ve,” Luke agrees. “Maybe we should’ve.”

 

Mara scoffs at her husband. “We’re sorry, is what he’s trying to say. And we are, Rey.”

 

“It’s…” she takes a moment to consider, really consider, and cannot lay the blame for the past months’ events at Luke or Mara’s feet. Is there even blame? Have she and him not found a way back to each other without the help of anyone else, besides the Force?

 

“It’s fine,” she says at last. “Really.” And it is.

 

Mara and Luke’s faces dissolve into skittering fuzz. Rey panics, banging on the holoprojector and re-entering their codes. Not a moment later, they come back, still distorted but at least visible.

 

“Quickly, before we lose you,” Mara blurts out, all business now, “A Force-bond is a connection between two Force users, as Luke said. Usually they’re master and apprentice, but… not always. It could be between family—not applicable here. In your case, I think the simplest explanation is—”

 

Rey inches forward on the sleeper until her face is almost in the holoprojection. “Yes?”

 

Mara puffs out a terse breath. “Love, Rey. A Force-bond can be created through love. Shared dreams, visions of the past or future—powerful stuff, that—the Force moves in different ways for everyone. For some, it is through love.”

 

“I started—on Batuu, I…”

 

Though she gives an encouraging nod, Mara makes no other move to help her finish her thought.

 

Rey swallows, then starts again. “It felt like I rediscovered the Force. In myself, all around me. I connected to it on my own—before, it had been with him. I loved… he and I… well, when he left, I—I shut it out.”

 

“That sounds very painful,” is Mara’s gentle reply. Then, after another moment of intergalactic distortion, she asks, “Are you alright? I can fly to Bastatha, I’ll leave right now. If you need to get out of there—”

 

“No.” She shakes her head for emphasis, not knowing if they can even see the gesture. “No, I think I’m alright. I think… I think I’m _going_ to be alright. I just need to speak to him. If you see him, will you tell him I said that?”

 

“We will,” Mara assures her earnestly.

 

Half a second later, the image cuts out.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You’re going to Rinnrivin Di’s party in _that_?”

 

This is what greets Rey when she finally emerges from her bedroom. Verla is leaning against the wall in the corridor, arms crossed. One eyebrow is arched, and her lips are pursed in contempt as she looks Rey up and down.

 

The Force sparks within her, an ember begging for oxygen, a flower begging to bloom, but she will not use it. Not for this. It is however, at this exact moment, that Rey decides she is finished with Verla.

 

No more giving her sister the satisfaction of being hurt by her insults. Or letting herself be bossed around. Or allowing her to minimize her value, her intelligence.

 

 _Sisters be damned,_ she tells herself. _You are more Ergel’s daughter than you are my sister, and you will never again break what does not beat for you._

 

“Yes,” she says smoothly, meeting Verla’s gaze without trepidation. “This is what I feel like wearing.”

 

“As if I care what you feel or don’t feel like,” Verla jeers. “You look like a docking bay worker.”

 

“Regardless.” Rey grins tightly, then turns back towards her bedroom. Over her shoulder she throws out: “I’m going in this, or not at all. And if I didn’t _feel_ like going, Verla—if I wasn’t in such a good mood—there is not a single thing in the galaxy you could do to make me.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

A hoversled is waiting when the family, after hours of grooming and primping, at last step out their front door. They are dressed to the nines, Ergel in an impeccably tailored tuxedo coat, Corwin in a flowing Vjun cloak, and Verla in an intricately beaded gown, this time in a delicate shade of lilac.

 

Rey’s appearance bears no difference from the way she looked when she marched out of Ergel’s home this morning; she wears only her boots, leggings, and a simple tunic. Her Nabooian pearl necklace is safely tucked away under its high-necked collar. Her face remains clean but bare, her hair neatly plaited.

 

But inside? Inside, she is entirely altered. No longer deflated, dejected, defeated; Rey is not alone, something she needed to be reminded of but a privilege she will never again forget or take for granted. She is not alone. She is loved. It is not over.

 

(Verla stares witheringly at her as they climb aboard the hoversled, disgusted with her appearance. Ergel and Corwin’s distaste is also apparent in their matching sneers, but it seems that Armitage’s romantic intentions towards Rey have put her in her father’s good graces, and he makes no comment.

 

It is a tiny kind of victory, but no matter. Rey silently rejoices.)

 

The hoversled dips under their combined weight, but the pilot— a grim-faced Toydarian— readjusts the repulsorlift thrusters until they float steadily once more.

 

Then, in the stilted silence of a group of people who are desperate for any company but their own, they are off.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rinnrivin’s lair— one of many, the pilot informs them, though this is his grandest and most prized— resides deeper below the surface than Ergel’s home, closer to the planet’s molten core. The heat rises steadily as they descend through one high-roofed tunnel after another, even though sulfurous winds buffet ever more furiously against them. They stop at several security checkpoints along the way; while their scandocs are checked against Rinnrivin’s guest list, she cannot help but take note of the dark holocam lenses that glint at them from the walls, recording their every move.

 

When they finally emerge from the last tunnel, she is surprised to discover that the lair is not carved from the same dark rock that permeates so much of Bastatha’s architecture. All around the lair, the massive cavern glitters with crystalline spikes the size of small starships, emerald and ruby and water-clear selenite, lit up by strategically placed glowpanels.

 

And in the center of this glittering tableau floats a structure of platinum and transparisteel, itself shaped like a great asymmetrical crystal; hissing repulsorlifts on its underside keep it hovering mid-air. Inside, bright chandeliers shine down on level after level of tables devoted to sabacc, dueling dice, jubilee wheels, and other games of chance or cunning, all run by gambling droids. A casino, then. Only the uppermost level, the trilateral tip of the crystal, is not visible from outside. An exclusive space even within this rarified sphere, she supposes. Perhaps reserved for business purposes, or private entertaining.

 

The structure combined with the heavily patrolled path to reach it is telling: this is a place designed so that no possible manner of raid or infiltration could succeed.

 

For all its beauty— and the structure is very beautiful, the beings within dressed just as elegantly as her own party, the furnishings even more lavish than those in Ergel’s home— she is unmoved and uninspired by the sight.

 

She pulls in a deep breath of thick, hot air as the hoversled drifts towards the grandly lit entrance at the heart of the crystal. This place is ominous; she doesn't like it. But fear does not strike at her as harshly as she might've expected. She can face this down. This, too, she knows— this too she will survive.

 

“No gambling,” Verla grumbles at Ergel, right before they disembark and pass through the burnished platinum doors. “We’re trying to _make_ money, not lose it.”

 

“I am at Mister Di’s service,” he spits back, irritated. “If he asks me to play a hand or two of sabacc, then by the eternal, I shall.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Up at the top of the crystal, they are led by two unsmiling Twi’lek guards into a massive vaulted chamber that reminds Rey of the throne rooms in Brixie’s holodramas. Wandering around the space are mostly Nikto— the lavender-grey Esral'sa'Nikto of their homeworld Kintan’s mountainous region, along with the desert-faring, green-skinned Kadas'sa'Nikto and their fellow desert-dwellers, the ochre-hued Kajain'sa'Nikto— all armed and armored and grimacing at each other, knocking their horned heads together in greeting.

 

They are the prevalent species on Bastatha, Corwin smarmily informs her, taking pride in his superior understanding of this underworld scene. He points out others as well: there are the Hutts and their coteries (as if she could not identify them herself), there are the fabled black jumpsuit-clad Amaxine Warriors, all carrying force pikes or blaster rifles. There are less of them, he laments, than there used to be. A pity for Rinnrivin, until Mister Hux and his private army came along.

 

“Still,” Corwin surmises, “somehow the strongest of the Amaxine have soldiered on in secret, unarrested. Makes ‘em even more of an asset to some.”

 

Others move between the groups— well-heeled merchants, their stone faced partners, scantily-clad wait staff— all in a state of barely-disguised guardedness.

 

The throne room is bathed in vermilion light, under which the smooth black floor shines. It’s a simulation of the light from the red star that keeps this dead planet inhospitable. Climate control in the throne room is even more powerful than in Ergel’s home; the cold temperature rivals that of Rhinnal at sunset. It’s strange for red to seem so cold; Rey has always felt it to be a color of warmth and light. Of feeling.

 

Not here, though.

 

She shivers. From the cold, maybe. Her forearms are exposed, the flesh there pimpled and the soft hairs standing straight up. Or maybe it’s from the discomfort she feels when she looks around the chamber. Not a single smiling face, not a single peal of laughter or conversation. Leering, yes. Grimacing, sure. Malevolent snickering, maybe. Much like the tunnels of Bastatha, much like every place on this planet, sound barely carries here; she’s certain this is no accident. The atmosphere is that of a glamorous funeral.

 

Uncomfortable, she loiters at the edge of the room, watching as the guests each in turn make their way up a small set of stairs to a dais at the far end of the chamber, where a massive obsidian throne sits looking over the crowd. Upon it sits Rinnrivin Di.

 

He is also Kajain'sa'Nikto, or Red Nikto, with coarse scales the color of ruddy desert dunes and a ring of sharp bony horns protruding from his scowling face. He holds court with his subordinates, narrowing his beady eyes at them while they bow and offer gifts, leaning forward to hear requests and offers, then slumping back into his chair to make his proclamations.

 

Like a reptilian king, lording over a scurrying horde of aristocrats.

 

“Come on, we’ve been summoned,” Corwin mutters to the group, at length.

 

After they've drawn near, Rinnrivin growls out, “Corwin.” It's a greeting, Rey presumes, although not a very cordial one. His voice is like the scraping of stone on stone. “You’ve brought your friend again.”

 

“Ergel, sir,” her father says, bending forward into a deep bow. “At your service.”

 

“You met Ergel a while back, Mister Di, remember? You assigned us Project Two-One-Eight-Seven? It’s going quite well, sir, and we were thinking perhaps we could set up a meeting to discu—”

 

“Hm,” Rinnrivin grunts. Almost begrudgingly, he barks out: “Yes, Ergel. I know you. And they are…?”

 

“My eldest daughter, sir—Verla. You met once before but perhaps she did not make an impression, perfectly understandable,” here he pauses as a visibly seething Verla dips down into a curtsy, then resumes, “And this is my other daughter, Rey.”

 

Rinnrivin’s eyes land on her, raking over her figure, before cocking his head expectantly. Rey merely waves. When he does not respond, she offers up a breezy, “Hullo.”

 

“Hm,” he repeats. “You Humans have many daughters. How unfortunate for you.”

 

“Quite!” Ergel rushes to agree, with a shrill little titter. It’s embarrassing to watch him grovel like this and if he was anyone else, Rey might have intervened on behalf of his dignity.

 

But for Ergel, she stays silent.

 

“Oh yes, very unfortunate sir, I—”

 

Rinnrivin points one scaly finger at Rey. “You, girl. Are you enjoying your stay on my planet?”

 

“It’s really something,” Rey demurs, her tone still lighthearted. This place is meant to inspire fear, hopelessness, meant to crush the will of its visitors like all of Bastatha’s mass is sinking in on them.

 

She won’t give Rinnrivin the satisfaction, just like she would not give it to Verla. Instead, she aims a lopsided grin his way.

 

Verla’s elbow digs squarely into her side and in a reaction borne from a lifetime of defending herself from far worse predators than her sister, Rey grabs the elbow then twists it hard. Maybe once she would have tempered this reaction, maybe she would have stifled her reflexes. But she is on her guard in this place, and Verla has made the mistake of touching her.

 

Verla stumbles back into Ergel’s arms, toppling them both. Sprawled out on the floor and scrambling to get back up, their mouths hang open, humiliated squawks issuing forth. Behind her, Corwin sucks in a sharp breath. A glance around the chamber tells her this moment has not gone unnoticed; the atmosphere is even more hushed than before, all eyes on them.

 

Rey forces herself to turn back to her family. Impassively, she watches as Ergel rises to his feet then helps Verla do the same. While he soothes Verla’s wounded pride, she gives Rey a look so vitriolic it could melt durasteel.

 

She returns it.

 

A grating noise, like an ungreased hatch door swinging in the wind, sounds out from the direction of the throne.

 

Slowly, she turns her head. And finds that the noise is coming from Rinnrivin Di.

 

It’s his laughter.

 

“Good, good,” he rumbles, clapping his hard hands together in a dismissal. “Very entertaining. Enjoy your stay on Bastatha, Rey of Jakku. You and your amusing family are most welcome here.”

 

Rey can practically feel her sister and her father’s rage vibrating through the Force. She ignores it in favor of bending in a half-hearted, lazy bow to Rinnrivin. Then she turns and marches out of his throne room.

 

She spends the remainder of the evening a few floors below, watching a podrace on one of the casino’s massive holoscreens.

 

And when they all return home later that evening, she does not apologize to either of them.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Bastatha days drag on and on. No natural light means no way of marking the progression of time in her father’s home beside the ticking of the ancient pendulum chronometer and the looped stereo of crashing waves. The sounds combined are almost enough to send Rey over the brink of madness. She leaves the dwelling each afternoon, thankful for the overwhelming phantasmagoria of shops and casinos simply because it is a reprieve from the bare white walls and Verla’s bitter scowls and the clock and the waves.

 

Each time, she searches for the eyeless Miraluka in her consignment shop, wishing to see her in her ratty armchair with her fat old voorpak, wishing to speak with her about the Force again. The shop is never open though; its lights remain off, its door firmly bolted shut.

 

She speaks to her friends most days, although she has little on which to update them. Gozetta is always interested in the gossip of Bastatha, but Rey is unsure how to parse what is gossip from what is business. In this place, they seem to be one and the same.

 

Rose and Brixie inform her, three days after Rinnrivin’s party, that the Captain has disappeared without having told anyone where he was going. She keeps her composure, at least until they’ve dropped the call and she can give herself over to her anguish in private.

 

What a slog, what a mire. At least she carries the Force within herself. At least she has that.

 

But not the dreams. Those, it would seem, have gone away for good.

 

Perhaps they’ve gone with Captain Solo to wherever he has disappeared.

 

 

. . .

 

 

A week and a day after arriving on Bastatha, Rey lies on top of her silky bedding in the middle of the afternoon, once again communing with the Force as the Miraluka woman showed her. She searches for the spark with her eyes closed; they are not necessary for her to see.

 

There it is, same as before; an ember glowing within her. She smiles.

 

The vents for the climate control rattle ever so slightly and the ocean soundtrack plays on as ever, at a low volume. Having awoken feeling laconic, she is still in her nighttime shift although the room’s temperature borders on wintry and her skin is stippled in cold-induced bumps. Her hair is an uncombed mess. The waves roars faintly as if from a great distance— _whoosh, swish, shurr_ — and with a deep inhale, and a extraordinary effort to concentrate…

 

…The waves are gone. Her eyes remain closed as she attempts to understand the silence; it’s like a great vacuum has opened up and inhaled all the noise in the world. The ever-present scents of sulfur and ozone and iron are gone, too, replaced with a blast of stannic air, the kind she has breathed while aboard pressurized starships.

 

Alarmed, Rey sits up. She opens her eyes. Then she tries to make sense of what has happened.

 

The other half of the bedroom is _gone_. Somewhere, at a point that shies away from her gaze when she looks for too long, the walls, the floor, the ceiling… they all disappear.

 

No, not disappear. They _melt_.

 

And what they melt into seems to be the cockpit of a ship. The details are blurred, hazy, like she’s looking at them under rushing water; but surely, that wide slanted surface covered with blinking lights must be its console? And the dark blur behind it, a viewport? Not that it matters, not that that’s where her eye lingers.

 

All she can look at, all she can think about, her blood frozen in her veins at the sight, is the dark-haired pilot seated with his back to her, seemingly absorbed in whatever he’s reading on the console’s sensor array. He’s dressed simply, in dark trousers and high dark boots, and a thick black sweater.

 

 _He_ is crystal clear, down to the very last detail; the fine dark hairs on the back of his neck, the weave of his garments, the sag of strong shoulders, each blunt nail at the end of each long finger on his big hands.

 

It’s _him_.

 

For a second, Rey simply gawks, flummoxed and transfixed and unable to speak. She has not a single clue as to his whereabouts. He could be anywhere. And yet— simultaneously— he is also in her bedroom.

 

 _What is this?_ she wonders. Is it a vision, like in the Kaliida Nebula or on Jakku? Is it a dream? She blinks hard once, twice. Punches her leg lightly, just to see if she’s dreaming.

 

She is not. This is _real_.

 

He perks up; his spine straightens and he cocks his head, seemingly just now noticing what Rey did moments ago— that everything has gone preternaturally silent and still.

 

She watches spellbound as he looks to his left and his right, then draws his blaster. When he spins his chair round, his eyes widen; he takes in the bedroom, which she supposes to be blurred to him as his cockpit is to her. He jumps to his feet. And finally, his eyes land on her. They are searching, electric. His gaze runs the length of her uncovered legs, her bare arms. He moves forward haltingly. One step, two steps.

 

Bewildered, he rasps out, “Rey?”

 

His voice is so hushed and uncertain, wobbling slightly, that Rey nearly flings herself up at him.

 

“I—”

 

“Are you still on Bastatha?” he demands.

 

“What?”

 

“You disappeared, in the…” he falters, looking down at his big booted feet before returning her stare, his own full of intention. “In the Force. I couldn’t find you. For almost a day. Luke—he told me where you’d gone.”

 

A swell of tenderness rises within; _he’d tried to find her_. Has he felt her in the Force all this time?

 

Has he been waiting for her to find him, too?

 

“Yes, I’m still here,” she answers softly. “On Bastatha.”

 

He grimaces, as if disgusted. “Why?”

 

“My family.”

 

His scoff is all the response she gets and all the response she needs. Frankly, she’s inclined to agree. For a moment of pure agony and pure delight, they stare across the galaxy and the chamber at each other.

 

“I don’t like it,” he says at last.

 

“I’m alright,” she rushes to assure him, but he scoffs again:

 

“Are you? You don’t… that’s not what…”

 

With a frustrated growl, he holsters his blaster and takes another step towards the sleeper. Towards her. He seems… too big, for this tiny excavated hole of a bedchamber. The top of his head nearly brushes the hard rock ceiling.

 

But his face. Stars, his face. Emotions march across it, an entire parade of reactions to seeing her like this; shock is chased off by something like relief, which becomes a perusal of her body so heated that Rey knows she is blushing, pushed away all too quickly by a concerned frown.

 

He clears his throat. “I can feel you, Rey. That’s not true—you’re _not_ okay.”

 

One more step and his thighs would touch the foot of the mattress. One more after that, it could be him and her in the same sleeper, tangled up together in the bedding. How many years has it been? Rey is momentarily infatuated by that trail of thinking; it takes a supreme effort to shake herself free and focus on what he’s said.

 

“No, I am, really. Only… I don’t like it here,” she confesses, in a small voice. “There’s no sunlight and it’s always too hot or too cold. I hate being underground. I hate how dead this planet is.” She swallows and blinks up at him. The next words are not easy to speak aloud to him, not with their history. “I don’t want to be with… my family.”

 

“Then leave.”

 

“I want to, but—”

 

He’s listing forward, a tree in the airless cyclone of their shared attraction. Helpless against the storm.

 

“But?” he murmurs.

 

“Your ship—the mechanics took it away for maintenance. It won’t be ready for another week.”

 

His dark eyes flare with something dangerous.

 

“Where are you?” she blurts out. “I have a holoprojector, we could… talk.”

 

“Coruscant,” he tells her. “I’ll come for you. I want—”

 

She shakes her head. “It’s not that dire, really.”

 

He is still speaking. “I want—Rey, the dreams—”  

 

“The dreams?” she gasps. Desperately, she launches herself up and begins to crawl to him. “Oh, _Ben_ —”

 

But in an instant, as if they’ve been suspended in a leak-seeker balloon that is suddenly popped, the sound of the waves returns and the air grows sulfurous once more. His eyes widen; it’s all the warning she gets.

 

By the time Rey has scrambled to the end of her sleeper, Ben and his ship have disappeared.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Captain Benjamin Solo has been in a state of utter agony these past two months.

 

Haunted by her, day and night, he stumbles through the hours, barely knowing himself. _Ben_ , she’d called him, in that soft reticent way that has become her custom during the years that have passed since they’ve last seen one another.

 

 _Ben_.

 

If he hadn’t been undone before— by her kindness, by her nimble mind, by the barely-repressed hurt she’d tried to hide, by her gentle approach with that insufferable sister of hers, by every single last kriffing detail of Rey the woman at twenty-seven, just as radiant as Rey the woman at nineteen— her saying his name would’ve unraveled him.

 

As it was, that moment they shared on Finn’s ship was simply the final step in a procession that had begun the moment she’d wandered out of the Dameron orchard and back into his life. A procession of love, of need, of wild hope and wretched yearning.

 

He had scorned her, that day. And in the days that had followed. _Altered beyond recognition,_ he’d told the Damerons, with all the venom he could muster. The pain of their parting, of her _rejection_ , had festered for nearly a decade, and the insults had rolled off his tongue so easily. He'd tried to pretend that the grey streaks in her fine hair— beautiful, the color of aged tintolive wood run through with silver— and the lines on her face— each a precious marker of the life she had survived, her insurmountable will to live, had been a detriment, a lessening of her intrinsic Rey-ness.

 

Ben cringes at the memory. Lies, all lies. Pathetic lies, bald enough that even Han would’ve been ashamed, had he been alive to hear them.

 

 _You’re no better than he was when it comes to this sort of thing,_ he thinks ruefully. _An oaf. Foolish blowhard. Clumsy nerf herder._ He wishes his father were here to give him a hard time. Then, just maybe, he’d steer Ben in the right direction. And this time, Ben would listen to him.

 

 _I’m going back,_ is the thought he sends out into the galaxy, hoping that if Han exists as cosmic energy within the Force, he will hear. _Eight years too late, but I will make this right._

 

Idly, Ben scans his surroundings. He’s strapped into one of a dozen rows of jumpseats in the retrofitted cargo hold of a BFF-1 bulk freighter, a public shuttle. They’re hovering just outside of Coruscant’s orbit. Any minute, the freighter will give a violent lurch and they’ll enter hyperspace.

 

He lives for that moment; he always has.

 

When they make the jump, he holds his breath so nothing can distract him from the exhilaration. The oxygen is pushed from his lungs; his heart races.

 

They’re on their way. _Ben_ is on his way.

 

But he has been an incomparable ass, hasn’t he?

 

Has he waited too long? Does he deserve to go back?

 

No, he cannot let himself second-guess this.

 

Seeing her regularly at the Damerons’, taking those trips together to Rhinnal and Gatalenta, living together under Rose’s roof, watching her accept the indignities of her life, how humbly she had continued on; it had been excruciating. Has been. Agony and ecstasy. Each one of those days, he knew truly what it meant to be too close and too far. And by the _core_ had he wanted to steal her away, to beg her for a place in her life again. The words had not come to him nor the moment to speak them, and when they finally had— his nerve had failed him.

 

Should she not have happiness? Should she not have new starts, and bright clean love? He feels old in the way only years of war and travel and loneliness can make a man feel old. She deserves someone smart and kind like Finn, or ambitious and successful like that Hux character. Someone fun, like Brixie. Someone who understands what she's been through, like Rose. She doesn’t deserve the heavy burdens he carries. The sad history they share.

 

This is how it has been for months: just when he has convinced himself that she loves him still, that they could rekindle something, he would catch her smile at Dameron or Finn, or be noticed by someone else, and he would be thrown back to where he started, back to the certainty that too much has passed between them.

 

Too much time, too much pain, too much unspoken regret.

 

The dreams, though. Him and her beneath the Damerons’ uneti tree. Those soft moments passed between them too, as ephemeral and diaphanous as a whisper. He’d realized early on, after only a few nights full of her body and her voice and those elegant ageless eyes, green-flecked umber like moss that grows on the boulders of his homeworld, that these were _not_ just creations of his mind. It was real, all of it; a gauzy kind of real, not quite enough to satisfy, but real nonetheless. Yet whenever he opened his mouth to ask her, he found he could not speak the words.

 

As in waking life, so it was in that strange port where they both found harbor each night. It was the Force. Once again bringing them together and keeping them apart. Of course.

 

Ben has not been insensate to the way Rey has looked at him. For about thirty minutes of that first dinner together, Lando smirking up a storm at his side, it had given him satisfaction to see her so wounded, so struck by him. And as quickly as the satisfaction rushed in, it had rushed out, a worthless kind of victory. And then all he was left with was his broken heart, all over again.

 

And hers.

 

He has struggled to distract himself, thinking perhaps he could be free of this never-ending desire, of the love he’d thought had burned itself out. He has stayed away although he’s known that she remained on Batuu, that he could return to her. Whether making himself of service to Finn, whether training new civilian pilots with Poe or assisting in Leia’s conspiratorial machinations— a spy network, she suspects, composed of uncaptured First Order agents, is attempting to infiltrate the Senate— he has sought to be free of his memories.

 

Nothing has succeeded; he can no longer pretend he’s wanted it to. Ben loves her more than ever.

 

(He remembers her grace, the way she spoke to him in secret through Rose, their hands clasped together at sunrise, how small and warm she always was, a tough muscled scrapper, so brave, so strong, _Rey_ , his Rey, how he could have held her, if only he’d said damn it all and taken her into his arms, if only, if only, if only…)

 

None of that matters now. Not since last night. He’d been gathering intel for his mother, and had just been leaving a meeting with the senior senator of Arkanis, who’d had much to tell him, when she’d just… appeared.

 

She’d looked strong, and healthy, but so _weary_. Frazzled, maybe. And when she’d spoken, the waver in her voice… no.

 

It won’t do.

 

There is much he has come to abide in his years at war. Much he has learned to live with. Seeing her suffer is not among those. He felt her distress in the Force, in that unbreakable string of light that has been pulled taut between them since the day they met. This can’t go on.

 

So when he gets where he’s going, he’ll take the _Falcon_ and he’ll break her out of there. They’ll be free. In time, Bastatha will become nothing more than another bad memory.

 

The cargo hold around him is crammed to the rafters with travelers and animals and cargo; the smell and the noise is unbelievable. It’s a nightmare. But if he arrives in a borrowed ship, there is a chance he might have to leave with it. The thought, that Chewbacca might turn him away, makes him ball his fists in his lap.

 

 _What would Han Solo do?_ he’d asked himself, upon waking this morning.

 

The answer had come to him: he’d gamble everything on the thing that matters to him. On love.

 

A grand gesture; but it _has_ to work. Chewbacca has to say yes.

 

He cannot stand this any longer.

 

He’ll tell her everything he’s wanted to say these past few months.

 

He’ll tell her he loves her, oh how wildly he still loves her after all these years, how much he needs her to be in his life, every day, by his side. Wherever she wants to go, whatever she wants to see or do— he doesn’t care anymore.

 

A glance out the freighter’s large, scuffed viewport; he could swear he recognizes this hyperlane. If he’s not mistaken, they’re already clipping along on the Perlemian Trade Route. In about twelve hours, they’ll peel off onto Randon Run. And after a few hours along the Randon Run, they’ll drop out of hyperspace and into the orbit of Kashyyyk.

 

He has no precise way of knowing, not without a look at the navcomp. But his gut is telling him that’s where they are; he’s traveled this route before, many times, a childhood and adolescence full of these routes. Just as when he was a boy, the journey doesn’t seem so long when he breaks it up like that in his mind. Still, the expanse of time between now and then is just long enough for him to fully consider all the ways this could go wrong.

 

No. No. He won’t allow it. This has to work.

 

It _has_ to.

 

 

* * *

  
****

“So,” Armitage says to her the next evening, upon his return to Bastatha and Ergel’s dining room, “I hear you have met the infamous Rinnrivin Di.”

 

“Mm-hmm,” she hums, reaching for her drink in a ploy to angle herself away from him and his cinnamon breath and his overpowering cologne while not being rude. Despite her perceived transgression at Rinnrivin’s party, her father has still displayed his tacit support for her and Armitage’s— union— in his seating plan. In fact, from the head of the table, Ergel sends her and Armitage a falsely benevolent smile, then returns to his nerf steak.

 

Armitage’s own smile is unctuous and sneering, equally false. “I’m very interested in your thoughts on him and his cartel. Did you enjoy your evening in their company?”

 

“In my experience, Mister Hux—”

 

“Are we not friends now, Rey? We have both survived meeting Rinnrivin Di—you must call me Armitage,” he insists.

 

“Right, okay. Well, Armitage, good company comes down to clever, kind people who care about others and who have ideas to contribute to the conversation. That’s good company.”

 

"There you are mistaken," he says gravely. "That is not good company—that is the best. Good company is merely surrounding yourself with the _right_ people. Where were they born, how many credits sit in their bank account, who do they know, how can they help you move up in the galaxy? Just birth and manners, really. That’s all good company is.” He smiles at Rey’s frown. “Ah, Rey disagrees with me, then. She’s dissatisfied, and rightly so. But surely you, more than anyone I’ve ever met, have the right to be selective in your company. So why not choose those who can improve your lot in life?”

 

Rey has the sense that he is not speaking in the general, but referring specifically to himself. She shifts again in her seat, away from him. “I—”

 

“Boring or objectionable though they may be, good company will get you what you want.” He follows her, leaning in, his elbow on the table. He’s practically seated sideways in his chair. His smile turns calculating. Reptilian. It reminds her of Rinnrivin’s.

 

“And it will get your _family_ what they want. Can you say the same for the best kind of company?”

 

“I… don’t know. I’ve never cared,” she admits.

 

“I wouldn’t expect you to, purehearted creature that you are.”

 

“It’s sad.” Shirking the unwanted praise, she glances across the table to find Verla resolutely ignoring the two of them, eyes riveted to Corwin, who is regaling her and Ergel with a tale about the meeting he had with a cartel spicerunner earlier that day. Her voice is barely above a whisper as she adds, “That they care so much about what a… well, I’m sorry, but what a thug like Rinnrivin Di thinks about them. I doubt he cares even half as much about them.”

 

Even as she speaks, it occurs to her that this does not worry her as it once might have. The concern is a tiny thing bouncing around at the fringes of her mind, trivial in comparison with her need to see _him_ again, to understand what happened last night.

 

Where is he? Is he actually coming here? How can she see him again, and how long must she wait until that happens?

 

But Armitage Hux, of all people, does not need to know this.

 

“Ah, he acknowledged your father, did he not? Rinnrivin Di cannot possibly be asked to care about every person who passes through Bastatha. But he remembers your father well enough to admit him into the inner sanctum and allow him to mingle with the kind of people who could improve his standing immensely.”

 

“It is… not a very welcoming place,” she comments.

 

“My dear Rey, no one _likes_ it here.” He adopts an exaggerated pout; it could just as easily be mocking as commiserative, she really cannot tell. “But business is business. And business on Bastatha is booming—but all business _must_ go through Rinnrivin.”

 

Stealing a sidelong look across the table at Corwin, who is still carrying on about his meeting, he mutters, “Mark this—the sooner we move your father up in Rinnrivin’s standing, the sooner we can disperse with the riffraff.”

 

“I don’t…”

 

“Your father can do better. And here on Bastatha, he will. I promise you that. On my dear late father’s life, I promise.”

 

“I… see…” she replies weakly. His stare is unwavering; she squirms under his scrutiny. His eyes are a pale sea-green. “Er, thank you.”

 

“No, thank _you_ ,” he says, with a dip of his chin. “For the honor of your trust. And your company.”

 

And the words are fine, yes. Very fine. Not the kind of fine words she wants, and not from the man she wants, but no one can mistake them for anything other than a great compliment.

 

Still, Rey cannot be sure that she likes them at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The freighter drops him on the outskirts of Rwookrrorro, a small city. Though Ben could barter for transit if he wanted to, he knows from previous visits that the journey to Chewbacca’s tree-dwelling is feasible on foot. Maybe he needs the time, too. Time to work out some frustration, time to think.

 

For months now, he’s woken up every morning either painfully hard or twisted up in sheets soiled by his own nocturnal emissions, the phantom scent of _her_ on his skin. There has been no amount of sparring, or flying, or fact-finding, or taking himself in his own hand, that could dispel the energy coiled in his body. Nor the memory of her soft mouth, those eyes, gentled with adoration, watching him watch her. Force, but he wants to see her, wants to touch her in the here and now.

 

Frustration, if he’s honest with himself, is a point passed long ago.

 

But the work he’s been doing for his mother has required a great deal of delicacy and tact, neither of which are his strong suits. The juxtaposition, like a pressure valve that has had no release, has brought him to his wits’ end.

 

The night is dark, Kashyyyk’s three moons hidden by a thick layer of clouds. It’s so hot, even at this late hour; the jungle practically hisses. The air is humid to the point of dampness, sweetened by the scent of budding orchidferns, and Ben is soaked through with sweat within minutes of trekking into the jungle north of Rwookrrorro. In the darkness, the clicking of some Kashyyykian amphibian and the chirruping of hidden birds seem amplified.

 

A flying can-cell swoops low, buzzing around Ben’s face, and although he knows the Wookies consider that to be a good omen, he swats it away with irritation, only to have two more dive at him in retribution.

 

The going is slow; the undergrowth is dense and sometimes thorny, and drags against his legs, and the towering wroshyr trees— some of which have grown two or three kilometers up into the sky, as thick around as mid-sized asteroids— have roots that peek up from the dark wet soil, taller than Ben. Each must be climbed, crawled under, or circumvented. Slippery moss-covered rocks, hidden by darkness and fog, seem to jump up to trip him at random intervals. Long, flowering vines hang from everything; they also seemingly swing at him from time to time as though sentient.

 

His glowrod cuts a path for him, but its light does not reach far. He draws on the Force in the guarded, careful way his mother and uncle have taught him, reaching out only far enough to sense if predators lurk nearby. There is not much room for him to think of anything but putting one foot in front of the other.

 

Thus, he makes his way forward.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Two hours have passed by the time he comes to a clearing that is surrounded by the tallest wroshyr trees he’s seen yet. Up near their boughs, a few hundred meters above his head, he can just make out the cylindrical silhouettes of Chewbacca and his kin’s sky-high tree dwellings.

 

Between them are walkways and hanging rope bridges; many of the trunks are lined by spiraling ladders and stairs.

 

A call sounds out in the darkness, a Shyriiwook salutation made by a familiar voice. Ben searches in the darkness for a way to begin his ascent and finds that the lowest rung of the lowest ladder is a good meter above his head.

 

Maybe he cheats a bit and uses the Force to leap up and take hold of the rung. But after that?

 

The rest of the long, long, _long_ climb up to Chebacca’s home is all him.

 

 

. . .

 

 

When he reaches the last rung on the last ladder, a hirsute hand is extended down from the hole in the wooden planks over his head. Huffing, Ben takes it, and allows himself to be pulled up onto the balcony that wraps itself around the wroshyr tree’s trunk.

 

A furry face is smiling down at him, the rich brown fur gone white around the mouth and small black nose.

 

Chewbacca.

 

 _“Welcome, young one,”_ he says. He lets go of Ben and turns towards a curtained doorway, then leads him inside.

 

Wookie younglings peek out at him from the doors of their loft bedrooms until a gruff reproach from Chewbacca sends them scrambling back into their sleepers.

 

The home is all fashioned from natural materials found here in the jungle. Yet it is decorated with technology and baubles that attest to the several lifetimes worth of travel Chewbacca has lived, all the things that he has seen. On one of the rounded walls of the main room hangs a medal, carefully mounted and framed:

 

Han Solo’s Medal of Honor.

 

Ben swallows heavily.

 

 _“Come,”_ says Chewbacca, pulling him into a hug before he can get a word of protest out. _“You are tired. You will eat, then sleep out in a hammock on the balcony, under the Kashyyykian moons. There you will find rest. In the morning—we will talk.”_

 

Having marched for hours, drenched through with sweat and exhausted, Ben nods readily.

 

Sleep sounds nice. Even if he suspects he will not, as Chewbacca said, find rest there.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“I have done something rather cheeky,” declares Armitage the next day, once he has entered their parlor and greeted them all, then seated himself, as has become his custom, beside Rey. It doesn’t matter where she herself sits— sofa, chaise lounge, armchair— he finds a way to be at her side, a habit Ergel has encouraged.

 

“Oh? What is that?” Verla bats her eyelashes at him from across the room. Armitage does not notice; he is busy watching Rey. She, in turn, is watching her father, who leans forward on the arm of the sofa, anticipation evident in his expression.

 

“I’ve bought us some tickets,” answers Armitage. “Rey, what is your opinion on Mon Calamari Ballet?”

 

“I don’t have one,” she says with a shrug.

 

“Such an innocent! How wonderful,” he drawls. “I am thrilled to be the first to expose you to the kind of culture you deserve. The Galaxies Opera House’s rendition of Squid Lake is the best in the Core, bar none. You must see it for yourself.” Turning to Ergel, he hastens to add, “You are all invited! It is a short journey from here to Coruscant, only a few days. And you’ll travel with me, in style. Naturally.”

 

“Naturally,” echoes Verla, inching forward in her seat. For the first time since Rinnrivin's party, her expression is something other than vexation; she grins and claps her hands excitedly. “Pa, the ballet! We’ll go—yes, of course we’ll go!”

 

There is a moment, right then and there, wherein Rey could decline. She could kick and scream, she could call her family out on their hypocrisy— Coruscant is the heart of the New Republic planets, antithetical to everything they hold dear— she could expose them for the heartless automatons they are.

 

But she remembers his words.

 

 _Coruscant_. _I want—_

 

Coruscant. This is it. She could see him again. They could speak. She could bring her belongings with her, she could stay with him. They could come back for _Nightbloomer_ later, after they’ve had time to talk, time to… well, whatever might happen after they’ve talked. Rey has no expectations, although those thorny hopes have begun sprouting anew around her heart.

 

Finally, the time has come to act.

 

Hux raises an inquisitive eyebrow at her, waiting for her to accept his invitation.

 

With a smile every bit as arch as his, she bows her head and does just that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he awakens at dawn, he is met by the tantalizing scent of fresh caf. After blundering out of his hammock, Ben shuffles across the balcony then settles in the low-slung hanging chair besides Chewbacca’s. Silently, he accepts the offered mug in the Wookie’s hand.

 

The canopy of lesser wroshyr trees beneath them, draped with vines, shines in the bright morning light. A webweaver’s gossamer trap strung between the balustrade and a column is beaded with dewdrops; each one glitters like a diamond. The chorus of insects and birds from last night is joined this morning by the whooping cries from a family of tachs, Kashyyykian primates.

 

Down below, he can see what he could not the night before: a clearing in the jungle, not far from Chewbacca’s tree. And there, just peeking out from the ferns and bamboo and other small trees, is the unmistakable mandibled bow of the _Millennium Falcon_.

 

His father’s ship. He almost weeps at the sight of it, after all this time. It looks good; Chewbacca has taken excellent care of it. The hull gleams ivory-white, free of the grime and plasma burns that used to mar its duralloy surface.

 

 _“You see how the forests have grown back?”_ Chewbacca’s ululating voice is rougher than usual, a guttural howl tinged with melancholy.

 

Ben glances over, surprised. The Wookie has always been taciturn in the morning; it’s something Han used to tease his friend about incessantly. But he’s not looking at Ben now. He sips at his caf, watching steam rise up off the tops of the trees.

 

 _“It took decades,”_ he continues. _“But that’s not so long, for us. This planet could not be broken by the Empire. That is where I drew my strength as I mourned your father.”_

 

“I’m sorry,” he sighs. “I know—what he meant to you.”

 

_“And to you?”_

 

He mulls that over for a long time. When he speaks at last, his own voice is strangled. “He was my father. Good or bad, he was that to me.”

 

_“He loved you.”_

 

Wookies and Humans, despite their similarities and their propensity to work well together, are very different species. It can be difficult for them to communicate complicated emotions accurately; in the past, Ben has sometimes looked at Chewbacca’s face and wondered what he was thinking. Now he does not need to; his old friend’s eyes shine, the proud jut of his mouth is downturned. His fur-covered frame shakes with unsteady breaths.

 

This is a pain they share.

 

“Yes…” He looks off into the trees, pulling in a few deep breaths of his own and pushing away the latent grief that still creeps up on him from time to time. “I know.”

 

_“He wanted you to be happy.”_

 

“Are you trying to make a point?” Ben asks tiredly.

 

_“Even out here, we still hear rumors. The Wexleys visit Malla and me every year. And your uncle calls often.”_

 

He sighs. Of course he does. “And?”

 

 _“The girl.”_ Chewbacca tilts his head, dark eyes still glinting, but Ben thinks his expression is less sorrowful now. _“The one from Jakku. You’ve seen her.”_

 

“Yes.”

 

 _“And?”_ prompts Chewbacca, in a satirizing purr.

 

“She’s…” Unsure of himself, he frowns down at the jungle canopy. “Well.”

 

 _“Well?”_ the Wookie scoffs. _“Well.”_ He shakes his head. _“Don’t play coy with me young one, I changed your diapers.”_

 

“She’s still so beautiful,” he bursts out, giving in to his inherent need to talk about her to someone, anyone. He’d tried to restrain himself when he was with Luke and _still_ had felt he’d said too much. He’s managed to avoid rambling on about her to Dameron or Finn or Tico. But now, here, with Chewbacca, there doesn't seem to be any point in pretense. “And kind. And strong. And… and when she’s not on Jakku, she’s happier. Or she was, before… she’s with her family again now. And… I shouldn’t have… I should have…”

 

_“Ach, don’t. Spare me that Human regret. Your life is too short, there’s no time for it.”_

 

He scowls at Chewbacca, but the Wookie doesn’t budge. Spurred on, Ben nods at the ship and announces, “I want the _Falcon_. To make a gesture. To go back for her.”

 

He lets those words linger in the damp morning air for a moment, a painful echo of his late father’s exhortations that morning they left Jakku. Chewbacca grimaces, clearly remembering the same thing.

 

After a beat, Ben adds sheepishly: “If you’ll give her to me.”

 

A hearty roar of approval; Chewbacca slams a shaggy hand down on Ben’s shoulder. _“That sounds like something the son of Han Solo would say.”_

 

He grins at Ben, baring his sharp fangs.

 

 _“And the son of Han Solo should be flying the_ _Millennium Falcon."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes?
> 
> Who's who, gffa style: the [Amaxine warriors](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Amaxine_warriors), [Nikto](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Nikto) [I had to cut the sub-species links for space but you can find them on this page!], [Miraluka](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Miraluka), and [Toydarian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Toydarian).
> 
> Only one droid: [gambling droid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Gambling_droid).
> 
> Where is [Republic City](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_City), [Galaxies Opera House](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxies_Opera_House) [Coruscant], [Perlemian Trade Route](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Perlemian_Trade_Route), [Randon Run](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Randon_Run), [Rwookrrorro](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rwookrrorro), and [Kintan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kintan)?
> 
> Fauna! [Voorpak](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Voorpak), [Kintan Strider](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kintan_strider), [Tach](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tach), and [Can-cell](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Can-cell).
> 
> A ship: [BFF-1 bulk freighter](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/BFF-1_bulk_freighter).
> 
> Parents, have you spoken to your kids about [Force-bonds](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Force-bond) and [Force visions](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Force_vision)? 
> 
> Some tech! [therma-slice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Therma-slice) [also: [breakdown of toaster anatomy](http://www.howitworksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/toaster.jpg)], [pendulum clock](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pendulum_clock), [turbo-blender](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Turbo-blender), [capacitor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Capacitor_\(device\)), [holocam](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Holocamera), [holoscreen](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Viewscreen), [leak-seeker balloon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Leak-seeker_balloon), and [scandoc](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Scandoc).
> 
> Would you use [Slootheberry wrinkle creme](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Slootheberry_Wrinkle_Creme)? I might.
> 
> Materials: [milkstone](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Milkstone), [kuati marble](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kuati_marble), and [selenite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenite_\(mineral\)).
> 
> Mmm, [Huttese lard-butter](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Huttese_lard-butter) and [zoochberry dumplings](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Zoochberry_dumpling).
> 
> Art in the gffa you ask? It's true. More about [Mandalorian cubism](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mandalorian_cubism) and [Miraluka tapestry.](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Miraluka_tapestry)
> 
> [Vjun cloaks](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vjun_cloak), cool fashion for cool folks.
> 
> [Dueling Dice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dueling_Dice), and the [Jubilee Wheel](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jubilee_Wheel_\(game\)), gffa's gambling at its finest!
> 
> I would like to live in a [Wroshyr tree](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wroshyr_tree) house like [this one](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/74/House_exterior_rmq.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070806161408), sipping on fresh caf and smelling the [orchidferns](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kashyyyk_orchidfern). Sounds pretty great.
> 
> And finally, is [Squid Lake](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Squid_Lake) a thing? [Spoiler: it is!]
> 
> [P.S. In case you were wondering, yes much of Rey/Hux's 'good company' conversation is borrowed directly from the book. It's one of my favorite parts!]
> 
> This last leg of the story will definitely deviate from Austen's in some ways; I hope it's still enjoyable for all the _Persuasion_ fans reading, and I hope the pieces are starting to come together now. Thank you so much for reading! 💙


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “… his feelings as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which he could not finish, his half averted eyes and more than half expressive glance, all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past. Yes, some share of the tenderness of the past. She could not contemplate the change as implying less. He must love her.”
> 
> “Jealousy of Mr [Hux]! It was the only intelligible motive. Captain [Solo] jealous of her affection! …For a moment the gratification was exquisite. But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed. How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments? It was misery to think of Mr [Hux]'s attentions. Their evil was incalculable.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thing's first: I cannot _believe_ I somehow forgot to add this glorious [portrait](https://clara-gemm.tumblr.com/post/184291575024/inspired-by-those-3-seconds-of-all-our-days-which) of young smuggler Ben Solo back when the incomparable [clara-gemm](https://clara-gemm.tumblr.com/) posted it. What a horrible oversight! PLEASE go check it out if you have not already seen it, as it is **PERFECT**. Thank you again, clara-gemm, and I'm sorry for adding this belatedly!! 💓
> 
> Also, many, many thanks to [Becca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscillateswildly/pseuds/oscillateswildly), a lovely friend who lets me bounce story ideas off her and who commissioned [this incredible depiction of Rey and her Captain engaging in some dreamtime hanky-panky under the Force tree](https://twitter.com/torra_doza/status/1125506384127127553) from the endlessly talented [Selina](https://twitter.com/selunchen). 
> 
> If you like Reylo and you have not checked out either of these artists yet, go take a look. Go on. This chapter can wait.
> 
> Also, a warning: **I'm writing this mostly because of the conversation I've seen floating around Twitter in the past week or so [one which I think is good, and interesting, and worth having] pertaining to unexpected and unpleasant plot elements that have not been tagged beforehand. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade with this chapter, but if you've read _Persuasion_ or any Jane Austen novel really, you know there's got to be at least one other suitor in the mix. So with that being said, there is the mildest bit of one-sided Reyux happening here. If it truly bothers you to read that kind of thing, please feel free to message me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive) and I will be happy to give you a paraphrased version of this chapter's events!**
> 
> Okay, now on with the show.

**42 ABY.**

 

“Well, I _am_ sorry to hear you’ve been having such a rough go of it,” Mashra huffs, shaking her head, after Rey has once again relayed her circumstances on Bastatha. She’d debated herself for nearly an hour over whether to even call Mashra, but in the end, residual loyalty to the Abednedo won out. “I can’t help but think that Ergel and Verla are under quite a bit of stress right now. They’re trying so hard to make a new life for you there! And to do that, they must establish the correct connections, forge the correct friendships. It’s a very trying time—I would advise you to be forgiving.”

 

“Yes, I suppose you would,” mutters Rey, glaring down at her hands. Already, she has begun to regret this. She should not have called Mashra.

 

“But at least there is a silver lining in all this.”

 

She frowns. “There is?”

 

“Armitage Hux!” The tendrils hanging from Mashra’s snout quiver with the force of her exclamation. “Taking you and your family to the ballet, all the way on Coruscant? He’s shown _such_ an interest in you. That strikes me as very promising!”

 

“But—but…” Rey begins, then hesitates, awash in confusion. After a few sputtering attempts, she manages: “The last we spoke, you warned me to stay away from him.”

 

“Which you were a bit snappish about, child.”

 

“Well, I—”

 

“Nevermind,” Mashra cuts in. “You _know_ I love you as my own, Rey. I want what is best for you—nothing so small as a minor disagreement could change that.”

 

She wrinkles her nose. “But… Armitage?”

 

A heavy sigh, from Mashra. “We must all be able to admit when we are wrong. And with him, I was very wrong! I saw him at several official senatorial functions while he was here in Republic City, and I must say… I’m ashamed of how badly I misjudged him.”

 

It sends her reeling, this admission. _What of Captain Ben Solo?_ she wants to scream. _What of admitting your wrongness there? Did you misjudge him? Will you never admit to the wrong you did by me when I was young and impressionable and knew only survival, only self-preservation? Have you no shame for eight years of heartache?_

 

“There’s something about him that—oh, I don’t know. It’s… odd,” she says, instead.

 

“ _Really?_ ” is Mashra’s astounded reply. “But he’s such a gentleman! His manners are impeccable, if you ask me. Yes, he’s proud, but in the right way—the way a man of his standing ought to be. _Just_ what a Human male ought to be! And Ergel has told me how much he esteems the man.”

 

All she can get out is a small, faint, “Oh.”

 

“He thought that Hux might be right for Verla, but now he sees you two as a much better match. And he speaks so highly of him—his prowess and foresight for business, his vast knowledge of intergalactic politics, his endless motivation—but to tell you the truth, when I met him, I was still against him. _‘Maybe Ergel’s been bamboozled,’_ I said to myself. Wouldn’t be the first time! He won me over, though, with his keen intellect and his excellent bearing. If you keep an open mind, he might do the same for you. And what’s more…I think _you’re_ just the kind of woman _he_ needs.”

 

Rey can hardly believe what she’s hearing. “I just don’t…” she mutters, caught between rage and bewilderment, “that is, I’m not…”

 

“Rey,” says Mashra, so solemnly that her deep voice rumbles through Rey like impending doom, like a storm on the horizon. “Think very carefully before you make any irreversible decisions. Think of the harmony you could bring to your family by aligning yourself with a man like this—think of his wealth and status. Think of how happy your dear mother would’ve been to know you were united with a man who could improve the standing of your father in the galaxy.”

 

“I’ve known him for just under two weeks,” Rey points out. “I hardly think it’s time to start talking about… unions.”

 

“And why not? If he is all that is correct and good in a man?”

 

“He’s a privateer!” she hurls back, using Mashra’s own words against her, as Mashra has done to her countless times. “He’s profited from war!”

 

Mashra shrugs. “As did we all, on Jakku.”

 

“That’s not—”

 

“Didn’t we live off of the remains of the Imperial Navy?” she asks. “Armitage and I have discussed this at length, and I see his point—morally, it’s a grey area.”

 

“I disagree,” Rey says, crossing her arms as if to shield herself from Mashra’s opinion.

 

“All I am trying to do is guide you towards a prosperous, successful life. Try to understand: Ergel likes Armitage Hux very much, and from the conversations I’ve had with him, Armitage Hux likes _you_ very much. He’s a rich man, a smart man. Someone educated. Civilized. It would be a good match.”

 

“I understand,” she all but growls, and now it is within her that the storm looms.

 

And she does. She understands her father’s greed and frivolity. She understands Mashra’s single-minded obsession with re-establishing some sort of familial harmony that, more than ever, Rey cannot conceive of ever having existed.

 

“I just don’t agree,” she concludes. “But thank you, as always, for advising me so… thoughtfully.”

 

And that, as they say, is that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You’re going _where_?” screeches Gozetta. The shrill pitch of her voice sends the holoprojector’s audio output into disarray; a garbled pinging is all that can be heard for half a minute before it finally settles down and Rey can understand what she’s saying once more.

 

She’s mid-rant.

 

“… just so typical! Never getting invited anywhere, never getting to do anything fun! Always left behind! Oh, Gozetta’s too young, oh, Gozetta won’t appreciate this, won’t understand that…”

 

 _Except for that time our entire family left Jakku, and_ you _weren’t the one left behind,_ thinks Rey. Having indulged in the luxury of entertaining a thought something so angry, so unfair, she dismisses it. As ever, she reminds herself that Gozetta was only an infant when Ergel chose to leave Rey— _abandon_ , she amends, _call it what it was, he chose to abandon you—_ and her sister should not be blamed.

 

She pulls in a deep breath, filling her lungs until they feel ready to burst. Then she releases it. By the times she’s finished, Gozetta has just about run out of steam.

 

“It’s just not fair,” she whines, a final lamentation.

 

“I know,” Rey replies calmly. “And I _am_ sorry. If the plan had been mine, I would have invited you. If it were my ship, I would come get you. But they’re not and I can’t, Goz.”

 

“This is always the way of it—never included, never a part of the fun.”

 

Rey hangs her head, compassion and frustration warring within her. “Please, don’t be like that.” She looks up, directly into Gozetta’s eyes. “I swear, I wish you could be there.”

 

“I suppose I shall just stay here and… farm something.”

 

“What if I bring you a souvenir from Coruscant?” Rey offers.

 

Gozetta pouts. “Something you’ve bought? With what credits?”

 

“I’ll…”

 

That gives her pause; Gozetta has a point. She wracks her brain for something gratis she might bring back. Something Gozetta might enjoy.

 

“The handbill? Mashra told me they’re often somewhat valuable.”

 

“And a _very_ detailed report of anyone important you see or anything interesting that happens?” Her sister’s tone is wheedling, still barbed with indignation.

 

“Of course! That’s a given.”

 

“Better than nothing, I 'spose,” Gozetta concedes, begrudgingly.

 

“I _am_ sorry.”

 

“You needn’t be.” A put-upon sigh, but at least it is one of resignation. “You weren’t the one who was rude enough to invite everyone but _me_! This is how it is for us babies of the family—Brixie agrees, you know.”

 

Rey nods sympathetically.

 

“As for this Armitage Hux character, well—he’s done nothing to win _my_ favor. And you can tell him that!”

 

“I’ll be sure to,” she says, repressing a chuckle. “No doubt it’ll come as a great blow to him.”

 

“You tease, but I am your sister,” Gozetta sniffs. “My opinion on potential suitors holds weight.” Before Rey can even reply, her face falls and she mutters a soft, “Doesn’t it?”

 

“It does, Goz. Don’t worry. It does.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

She gets to packing.

 

There isn’t much she’s taking with her; her small satchel, and only the essentials. A few toiletries. The holoprojector set. The postcard, the dried nightbloomers, and her sketchbook, carefully tucked away in an inner pocket. A handful of the new clothes Gozetta hired the tailoring droid to make for her. All of it fits neatly inside; her quarterstaff does not.

 

“I can make another,” she murmurs to herself, setting it against the hard rock wall of her bedroom.

 

If she even needs it where she’s going; she hopes she does not.

 

The ballet. Her excitement bubbles up and over, effervescent; the fanciest place Rey has ever been is that jatz club in the middle of Lake Sah’ot, back on Chandrila, and Rinnrivin’s lair. She’s never been inside a theater, or an opera house. She’d never even been to a city, before Chandrila. And she’s _never_ been to a planet like Coruscant, where the entire world is populated by one contiguous city.

 

So she’ll put up with Ergel and Verla and Armitage long enough to see the ballet. Just as Armitage advised, she’ll choose good company over the best company. For a short while. And when it’s over, she’ll go find him.

 

 _Ben_.

 

Who knows? Maybe he’ll even be at the ballet.

 

“Too convenient for my luck,” she grumbles, but it’s lighthearted. Rey is ready to let go of resentment, of sorrow.

 

She is ready to move forward.

 

_But what if he tries to come to Bastatha?_

 

Ice-cold panic slices through her excitement. His words echo in her ears once more: _I’ll come for you._

 

Oh, stars. If only he would just… appear again, like before. Maybe she can get a message to him. _But he’s gone missing_ , she argues back, against herself. _No one’s heard from him in days._

 

Who can she tell, besides Luke and Mara? They, at least, know that she wants to speak to him; she’ll call them back to let them know where she’s going. Finn, maybe. Senator Organa, if she could get a message to her. Brixie, Rose. Poe.

 

Although… maybe there’s a quicker way. A shortcut. A way for them to speak directly, from across the galaxy.

 

Rey reaches for the black pearl hanging in the hollow of her neck. Warmed by her skin and smooth as ever, it calms her.

 

She can figure this out.

 

  

* * *

 

 

“I’m sure by now you’ve heard,” is the first thing Gozetta says when Brixie activates her chirping, blinking comlink.

 

“…Heard what?” puzzles Brixie.

 

She glances across the main room to Rose, who is stirring a boiling pot of wander-kelp meant for some of the weaker newborn fathiers. One of her dark brows arches, in question. Brixie mouths a confused ‘no idea’ at her.

 

“About the ballet, on Coruscant?” Gozetta’s voice pitches upwards, all self-pity and umbrage. “Mister Hux is taking Rey and my father and my sister to see Squid Lake at the Galaxies Opera House! Can you belie—”

 

“Hold on,” Brixie grits out, staring at Rose. Rose stares back, nonplussed. Her lips have sunk down into a frown. “One more time now, Goz, and a little slower, okay? Rey is going to the ballet on Coruscant with who?”

 

“Armitage Hux!” screeches Gozetta. “It is _terribly_ unfair, don’t you think?”

 

Rose’s sweet face has clouded over; she is glowering at nothing, eyes no longer on Brixie. Though they haven’t cohabited long— and knew each other for even less time before they decided to take this leap together— Brixie has seen that look once or twice, and she knows it’s not good. She tilts her head inquisitively but Rose pays her no mind.

 

Truth be told, Brixie is aware that when it comes to social graces, she is often lacking. Terena was all hard truths and contemplative silences; most of the time, Poe is more at ease cracking a joke than expressing a sincere emotion. Her parents, for all their generosity, are better suited for directness than subtlety, when they're not avoiding the uncomfortable topics altogether. Not that she blames them; they've lived a hard life. They're entitled to their comfort. But somehow, she has landed right in the middle of all her family members, and though she always means well, she can’t help but feel that when she opens her mouth to speak, she misses the mark more often than she hits it.

 

Rose never makes her feel bad about that, though.

 

(Rose is awkward too, sometimes. Together, they fumble, and laugh at themselves, and fumble some more.)

 

Still, in this particular instance, Brixie doesn’t need the implications explained to her. For once, she gets it. Rose is thinking about Rey, but also, Rose is thinking about Ben Solo.

 

And about how Ben Solo is going to take this news.

 

She herself is wondering the same thing.

 

(And maybe she is cringing, ever so slightly, at not seeing all the signs that he was so _obviously_ still in love with _her_ , and she with him. That Brixie inserted herself somewhere that she did not belong, with a man who never would have made her happy, never could have understood her— not like Rose does. Oh, well. Brixie sees it now for the social blunder it was and adds it to the teeming pile of social blunders she has committed over the course of her young life. Water under the bridge, she figures. All’s well that ends well.)

 

“I… have to call you back,” she tells Gozetta.

 

There is a prolonged string of fretful grumbling which Brixie cannot decipher. Finally, she hears, “What have I _done_ to be treated so miserably by everyone!”

 

She rolls her eyes at Rose, which goes unseen; her girlfriend is mindlessly stirring as she glares out the window at the valley, deep in thought. Re-focusing on Gozetta, she explains, “Look, this isn’t _about_ you—when Rey told you this, did you stop and think, hey, _why_ is she going to the ballet with _Hux_? When Ben Solo is… right there?” Again, she looks to Rose. “Back me up here?”

 

“Absurd,” is all Rose says, her voice distant.

 

“Exactly, it _is_ absurd!” she reiterates for Gozetta.

 

“Well what am I supposed to do about it?” comes Gozetta’s bleating reply.

 

“Just—I don’t know. It seems cruel to tell her to stay on Bastatha. Hasn’t Poe heard anything from Ben?”

 

“Not a thing.” Gozetta falls silent for a moment. Then: “You haven’t either?”

 

“Zilch,” says Brixie.

 

“Kriff.”

 

A thought presents itself: if Poe weren’t so wrapped up in his woe-is-me-I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself-now-that-the-war-has-ended funk, maybe he would take charge and figure out how to rescue Rey from Bastatha without violating her wishes that they _not_ do that exact thing; if he were on his game, he could find a way to prevent her from going to the ballet with someone who isn’t Captain Benjamin Solo. He’s not, though. Brixie sets that worry aside, with the mental note to return to it.

 

She’s going to have to step up here.

 

“I have an idea but I really do have to let you go,” she says.

 

“But—but… well, fine. But call me back when you’re finished and fill me in on whatever you’re doing. You know how I hate being left out of the loop!”

 

“Okay, bye!” she replies, sing-song, already clicking off the comlink.

 

“What’s your idea?” asks Rose skeptically, still looking perturbed.

 

“We need to get in touch with Finn,” Brixie tells her. “And _he_ needs to get in touch with the Skywalkers.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

The night before they are set to leave, Ergel receives an invitation to Rinnrivin’s lair for a private dinner. He and Verla and Corwin are all agog, fluttering around their troglodytic home like a trio of overheated sand-moths as they primp and preen.

 

“I’m not going,” says Rey, when Verla bangs on her bedroom door and demands to know why she isn’t doing the same.

 

“And why not?” Ergel barks out, from behind Verla. He and Corwin hover out in the corridor, glowering.

 

“Seeing a friend.” She musters a wan smile as she shuffles past them.

 

Ergel scoffs. “Who? What friend? This is Rinnrivin _Di_ , you impudent girl!”

 

“You don’t know her,” she replies over her shoulder.

 

“Who is it?” Corwin now, manic urgency in his voice.

 

“A Miraluka, she runs a consignment shop near the central commercial hub.” She’s almost free of them. Just a few more steps.

 

“This is an outrage! You could see her any time!” seethes Ergel. “Rinnrivin likes you—he specifically requested your presence at his table!”

 

Rey pivots on her heel to face her family, who have followed her to the door. “I _could_ see her any time, but I’ve already made plans to see her _tonight_.” That’s not exactly true, but they don’t need to know that. “Give my regrets to Rinnrivin. I hope you enjoy your dinner.”

 

Verla throws her hands up in a huff and withdraws to her room while Ergel shakes his head at her, disgusted, and Corwin, for once, is not smirking but seething, his face an unhealthy shade of scarlet. Offering them an unconcerned wave, she turns and walks out the door.

 

To her utter surpise, she finds the shop open— despite the late hour— and its owner seated in her old ratty armchair inside.

 

“Ah, there you are,” she says warmly, when Rey steps over the threshold. The voorpak rouses from its nap long enough to glance up at her with indifference, then returns its head to its resting place. The woman points with her foot towards a piece of furniture that was not in the shop the last time Rey visited— another armchair, just as sagging and worn as her own. “Have a seat.”

 

“For someone who runs a business that never moves, you’re hard to find,” Rey comments, collapsing into the chair. It’s comfortable, like it’s been hers for years.

 

The woman laughs. “This place is more of a hobby than a livelihood—I’m open when I feel like it. Or when I feel I should be.”

 

“Did you know I was coming to see you?” she asks, curious. They’ve made no plans; she hasn’t even seen her since the first time they met.

 

“I felt you might need to see me,” the woman replies. “I had a sense you have some questions.”

 

“Oh.” Rey peers around at the shop, wondering how to broach the subject. Directly, is what she settles on. Straight to the point. “Do you know anything about Force bonds?”

 

Another warm smile; the metal visor resting over her eyes and brow glints dully in the shop’s low light.

 

“How funny you should ask. As a matter of fact, young lady, I do.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Armitage Hux owns a Rulaarian pleasure yacht, an ostentatious and expensive class of ship infamous galaxy-wide for both its expense and its excess. The hull is plated with glittering black Coruscanthium, the interior all clean white carpets and angular bulwarks, crimson Laroon wood accents that have been polished to a gleaming, glossy, mirror-like finish, and where there absolutely must be metal components for purposes of the ship’s operation, they are gilded, so as not to diminish the atmosphere of absolute luxury.

 

Its ion engines run so smoothly their hum is less than a whisper, and what little sound is made by the ship’s exodus from Bastatha is disguised by the propulsive neoclassical music filtering out from the yacht lounge’s hidden speakers. The desolate wail of a vibrano sounds out above the orchestra as Rey stares down at the glass of bubbly teal Toniray wine that Armitage’s protocol droid has placed in her hand. Shifting uncomfortably on the pouf couch cushion, she glances over at Verla, seated beside her.

 

Verla studiously avoids her gaze, leaning forward to signal her rapt interest in Corwin’s inane story about some trip he took to Coruscant months ago.

 

Rey sighs.

 

“It’s a wonderful craft, isn’t it,” Armitage coos, from her other side. He lays one manicured hand on her thigh as he sips from his metal flask of tea, almost smugly. Rey never knew someone could do something so mundane as consuming a beverage smugly before she met the man.

 

She frowns down at the hand resting on her trouser-clad leg.

 

Where is the Force bond holocall now? How she wishes _he_ would just… appear, right here. The Miraluka woman informed her yesterday that it takes years of practice and a mastery of the Force to be able to connect as they did, across all those countless parsecs of space. And that’s for those who are powerful enough to even forge the connection themselves.

 

Rey never would have imagined it possible, had she not witnessed it with her own eyes. Maybe one day they _will_ be able to do it intentionally; for now, however, it must remain the will of the Force. She cannot beckon him, there is no trick to learning it overnight.

 

There is only hope. (How familiar a feeling.)

 

For one moment, she gives in to the temptation of a daydream, wherein the Captain shows up here in the lounge and is immediately stricken mad with jealousy of Armitage. How might he like it to have the tables turned? His dark eyes would smolder, his big hands would ball into white-knuckled fists. Maybe he’d storm across the cabin and physically drag her away— not that she thinks she’d fight him— all the while glaring daggers at the man who dared touch her.

 

 _Mine,_ he’d growl. Maybe. If he did, he’d say it low, in her ear, a dark promise, obscene and perfect in its immutability. Final. Not open to debate.

 

She would be his, too. Happily.

 

Her mind wanders onward down this road— Armitage’s multiple attempts at conversation sailing by her without acknowledgment— as she imagines how possessively the Captain would claim her, if he were to appear here right now. How he’d grab her, the deep muttered commands he might pour in her ears.

 

There’s delight in the thought, but soon enough, the fantasy dissipates into shame. Shame that she’d wish that on him, shame that his pain might satisfy something, might scratch some vindictive itch.

 

Rey just wants to see him, wants to touch him. They have both been hurt enough. Too much.

 

And she needs to bide her time to get what she wants.

 

It seems such a long shot that he’d be at the ballet, but if there are indeed going to be many politicians in attendance— as Armitage has stated— it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility. He might be. And if he’s not, she’ll take her things and leave once it’s done; she’ll make her way through Coruscant on her own until she finds him.

 

Yes. That’s the best plan she can muster, for the time being.

 

“I’m tired,” she blurts out, interrupting Armitage mid-sentence.

 

He blinks at her in consternation for a drawn-out second, then recovers smoothly. “Of course,” he murmurs. “We’ll have plenty of time to speak about this further over the next few days. But—do consider it?”

 

Rey doesn’t know what he’s been chatting to her about and she does not care.

 

“Sure,” she replies, nonchalant.

 

“My protocol droid will escort you,” he says. Raising his hand, he beckons to the scarlet-plated IMP-22 hovering behind the bar, on the other side of the lounge. “Imp, take her to her room.”

 

“Thank you,” she says to him.

 

Then she rises, dislodging his hand from her thigh, and dips her chin in a curt nod to the rest of the group. This gesture is ignored by her father— still resentful for her disobedience last night— and Verla, as is her wont. Only Corwin returns it, with a facetious bow.

 

“It is I who must thank you, Rey,” Armitage says, pulling her attention back to him, his humbled tone belied by his tight grimace. “For sharing a drink with me,” here he nods to her untouched glass of Toniray, which she promptly sets on a nearby table, “and for… considering my offer.”

 

He snatches at her hand and brings it to his lips, then releases it. The entire action happens in one breath, and is over before Rey has a chance to react. A little shocked, a little disgusted, but mostly just determined to be alone with her thoughts, Rey coughs out:

 

“Right. Well. Goodnight.”

 

With that, she turns and follows IMP-22 to the lavish sleeper cabin that will serve as her private quarters for the duration of the journey; it’s twice the size of her AT-AT hovel on Jakku, and holds half the value to her.

 

 _Bide your time,_ she tells herself, curling into the fetal position under the covers. Before they left, she contacted Finn, who was in a meeting, so she has left a message with Angmi; she has also spoken with Rose, who’d already heard about the ballet, and with Mara Jade. She has done what she could, for now.

 

With the pressing of a few keys on the bedside control panel, the blinds lower over the viewports and the room is submerged into absolute darkness. Eyes closed, she thinks: _Wait for the right moment to act. Remember what the Miraluka woman told you._

 

_‘Opportunity will present itself to you. Make sure that you are ready for it, when it does.’_

 

There is nothing else to be done. So with another wet, snuffling sigh, she attempts to sleep.

  

 

* * *

 

 

After he’s navigated his way back along Randon Run to the Perlemian Trade Route— dropping out of hyperspace more often than he’d prefer in order to circumvent the vast asteroid belts that litter the Kashyyyk sector— Ben finds the hyperlane to Bastatha to be smooth sailing. Even flying without an astromech, luck or the Force or both seem to be on his side. At the rate he’s clipping along, he’ll make planetfall in about twenty-nine standard hours.

 

He leans his elbows on the console, watching the galaxy pass by through the cockpit viewport.

 

 _Fastest ship in the galaxy,_ his father had always said. He hopes Han was right.

 

Never before has she been entrusted a mission so vital to Ben as this one.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“So,” says Finn to Mara Jade, in a tone that does nothing to disguise his bewilderment with the story he’s just related, “that’s why Rose and Brixie wanted _me_ to ask _you_ if there isn’t some way we can—I dunno, get a hold of him. Make sure he’s staying _put_ on Coruscant.”

 

Mara’s first thought is of Rey’s frantic call the other day. Force, but this whole situation gets more exasperating by the hour. She grits her teeth, stealing a glance her husband’s way. He stands at the other end of the tent, behind the holoprojector and out of Finn’s line of sight; his eyebrows are raised, the look he’s giving her is pointed. His left cheek bulges with the mouthful of ration bar he’s hurriedly chewing.

 

“I understand, Finn. Thank you—I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“Okay.” Finn nods to himself, looks down— it appears that he’s seated at a desk in a private office, gleaming cityscape visible through the window behind him— then he returns his attention to Mara. “Now that _that’s_ out of the way, how’s the praxeum coming along?”

 

“Surprisingly well, actually—” Mara falters when she notices Luke; he is simultaneously stuffing the last of the ration bar into his mouth and gesturing for her to end the call.

 

“Finn,” she interrupts herself, “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’m afraid I have to jet.”

 

He gives a dry laugh. “Yeah, okay—guess I should get back to work, anyway. I might be able to swing another visit in a few months if you guys need more supplies.”

 

“I’m sure we will—I’ll keep in touch,” she replies, her smile equally tired. They’ve been working long, hard days for a while now; their last reprieve was the trip they took to Chandrila and Rhinnal. Mara would very much like another one. Soon.

 

“Take care, until then,” says Finn.

 

“May the Force be with you.” She waves, reaching for the activator.

 

“…Uh, right, yeah. You… too. Bye.”

 

The lit-up cloud that was Finn’s face disappears, and Mara levels a frank stare at Luke. “That was sort of rude.”

 

“Ben’s been missing because Leia asked him to cozy up to a few senators she’s marked as suspicious,” Luke replies, clapping his hands to shake off the crumbs. “ _That’s_ where he’s been… until about five standard days ago, on Coruscant.”

 

“Okay…” Mara drawls, with a shake of her head. “And five days ago?”

 

“That’s the thing.” He crosses the tent and drops to his knees next to her on the cot. “He met with a senator from Arkanis, debriefed with Leia by hologram afterwards, then dropped off the map! She hasn’t heard a word from him since. No one has.”

 

“Luke, _why_ am I just hearing about this now?”

 

Mara does nothing to corral her vexation; judging by Luke's nervous laughter, she’s sure it’s apparent. His brow is furrowed as he flops over onto his back.

 

“…Because I’m pretty sure I know where he’s going. Only… I didn’t realize Rey would be leaving Bastatha so soon.”

 

His reticence only serves to further pique her interest. And her annoyance, albeit now with herself, for not telling her husband earlier about Rey’s departure.

 

_“Luke.”_

 

He groans. “Remember how lovesick he looked when he came out here? How he talked about Rey?”

 

“Yes…”

 

“And remember how Han used to get about Leia? About impressing her, pulling off his elaborate romantic gestures whenever they fought?”

 

Her eyes itch. The constant presence of sand in her life here on Jakku, coupled with the bright glare of its sun, has been an adjustment; by the end of most days, they burn from the elements. Of course, Mara is a very adaptable woman. This, as with all the obstacles she has faced in her tumultuous life, she will either adjust to or overcome. In time. But for now, they must itch. Rubbing at them, she sighs, “Force… what is it you think he’s done?”

 

“Something stupid,” he says, chuckling to himself. “And romantic. Something Han woulda’ done.”

 

“Something _like_?” Her patience is running thin for his sage-Jedi-master banthashit.

 

His grin is jaunty and lopsided. Maybe a little sheepish. “Like go to a certain Wookiee planet and retrieve a certain bucket-of-bolts family heirloom, in order to pull off a certain kind of rescue mission to a certain planet where a certain lady love is languishing.”

 

“ _Please_ tell me we are allowed to do something now,” she says, smacking the palm of her hand against her forehead. “I don’t know how much longer I can sit by and watch this lunacy unfold.”

 

The look Luke gives her is earnest in its unease. “Leia—”

 

Again, she recalls Rey’s pleading tone. How miserable both young people have appeared, during their recent visits to Jakku.

 

“Doesn’t have to know,” she interjects. “Just—call your nephew? Call him. Please. For my sake—for _Rey’s_ sake. And his. Call. Him.”

 

“She won’t be happy when she finds out. And you know Leia—she _will_ find out,” he rejoins, hands folded on his stomach.

 

“Yes well _something_ tells me she’ll get over it when Ben brings home a lovely daughter-in-law, hmm?” She sinks down onto her side, one arm propping up her head, and leans in toward Luke. “How about this: you get in touch with Chewie. He’s got the _Falcon_ , hasn't he? If he tells you Ben took it, then you’re just being a dutiful uncle by calling him. Not interfering. Just… checking up on your nephew.”

 

Reaching over, she brushes her fingers across the bristly scruff of Luke’s cheek.

 

“And if Ben didn’t take it, if that’s not where he is—well then, no harm, no foul.”

 

“Okay, okay,” he acquiesces, sitting up and reaching for his comlink. “When you’re right, Mara Jade, you’re right.”

 

“Damn straight.”

 

He barks out a laugh, and eases himself back down onto the cot, closer to her than before. He reaches for the hem of her soft coarseweave robe, the cool flesh of his artificial hand as lifelike as ever as it travels along the sensitive skin of her belly, venturing its way up to her breasts.

 

And though their youth may be behind them, they are no means dead; an hour, maybe two, is given over to the myriad of joys they find in each other.

 

But eventually, Luke does make the call.

  

 

* * *

 

 

“Like I said, no one knows for certain, but I’m working on it, Rey, I promise. We all are. Just hang in there, okay?”

 

Finn’s blue-tinted face lights up in a warm, reassuring smile. Rey’s eyes skip past it towards the starboard viewport of her private cabin, where Coruscant looms ever larger.

 

They are approaching from the umbral side of the planet, and it looks to Rey to be no more than a dark disc in the void, outlined in brilliant white light by its one sun, Coruscant Prime. Yet that disc is not entirely shrouded in darkness; it is overlaid by an intricate webbing of lights that stretches from one side of the planet to the other, wide overlapping circles halved and quartered, then those quarters halved, again and again, by long lines of more light, all of them glowing a dim golden amber.

 

It reminds her of the illuminated cogs and wheels found inside ancient technology, preserved artifacts she’d find every so often in an officer’s cabin aboard the _Inflictor_ or the _Ravager_. The whole things looks orderly, like it was planned out before the first foundation was ever laid.

 

How different from the barren chaos of Jakku.

 

“Rey.” Finn's smile remains when her gaze flits back to him. “Trust me on this one?”

 

“I trust you,” she murmurs.

 

She has to; it’s her only recourse. But Rey suspects that even if she had other choices, she would still put her trust in Finn. There’s something about him— maybe it’s their shared experiences of disappointment, of isolation, of heartbreak, maybe it's that air of assurance he carries with him— that she trusts, inherently.

 

“I’m glad,” he says, nodding. “Like I said, hang in there. And I mean it… stay _put_ on Coruscant.”

 

“Alright,” she agrees tiredly. “I will. For a bit.”

 

She doesn’t mention that the only way she’s staying put on Coruscant is if she finds him; otherwise, if he’s not onworld, she’ll be taking matters into her own hands.

 

It doesn’t seem relevant. Not yet, anyway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He’s making good time when the comlink affixed in the _Falcon_ ’s console suddenly lights up and begins beeping at him. Despite the good care Chewbacca has taken, the old comms system is on the fritz, so there’s no way for Ben to identify who’s calling. All he can do is flip the activator switch, and accept the call.

 

“Ben.”

 

His uncle, sardonic as ever. He utters Ben’s name in a tone both scolding and teasing; a poor excuse for a greeting, in Ben’s opinion.

 

And very typical.

 

“Speaking,” he replies, feeling flippant after hours of boredom.

 

“I just got off the line with Chewbacca, he told me you took the _Falcon_ ,” says Luke, an unnecessary explanation.

 

“Who’s this?” he asks.

 

“Don’t be an ass—you know damned well who it is.”

 

He huffs a quiet laugh; that’s pretty much the reaction he’d expected. “What do you want, Luke?”

 

“For you to call your mother and tell her where you are, first of all.”

 

 _Kriff_. Ben winces. In the thrall of seeing Rey in that surreal vision-that-was-real, and then resolving to get himself to Kashyyyk, he’d let it slip his mind. He’ll have to brace himself for the verbal tongue-lashing Leia probably has in store for him.

 

“You still there?”

 

“I’m here,” he says. “I’ll call her.”

 

“Good.” Luke’s heavy sigh resonates in the quiet of the cockpit; it has only the distant drone of the engines with which to compete. “So what’s the plan here, kid?”

 

“Why?” he asks, suspicious. He never knows what Luke knows or when he knows it, and all his life, he’s had the feeling that however much he thought Luke knew, Luke was in fact aware of far more than he was letting on.

 

It drives him crazy. Always has.

 

(He winces again when he remembers the questions he let slip to his uncle during his visit to Jakku. Knowing that Luke had seen Rey there before she left, seen her home and her profligate father’s bar, had forced his hand. He was like a drowning man, grasping at the waves, desperate for any hint of oxygen. A desperation, again, of which Luke had seemed all too aware.)

 

“I’m trying to prevent you from doing something stupid,” is Luke’s dry response.

 

Ben drops his head into his hands, smoothing back his lank hair. Of course Luke knows something he doesn’t. Of course he does. He pulls in a deep breath, in an attempt to keep himself steady and measured.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“I mean: if you’re going to Bastatha, you’ll have gone a long way for nothing.”

 

That sets him off. “You can’t be happy for me? I’m taking _your_ advice—”

 

“Of course I could be—if you were actually going to _find_ Rey there,” Luke interrupts, “which you won’t.”

 

For a moment, Ben gapes stupidly at the comlink light, processing that vague prophecy. There are few things his uncle loves more than being ambiguous; half the time when he asks for clarification, he’s told he needs to figure it out for himself.

 

But he has to ask.

 

“Explain,” he mutters.

 

Luke chuckles. “You might want to sit down for this one—”

 

“I am.”

 

He can feel the furrow puckering along his brow as he frowns at his mind’s eye image of Luke, smirking at him.

 

“Well, that’s good,” declares Luke. “‘Cause… you’re not gonna like this.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The plasticene crate sitting in the number three hold of the _Millennium Falcon_ had nothing but spare components inside and the ship does not need any of them to continue flying through hyperspace.

 

Which is good. Because currently, it lies in pieces, scattered across the hold’s deck. The components within are smashed to bits as well. One of the wires from a former capacitor sparks erratically as Ben stares down at it, slightly winded by his outburst.

 

It’s been a long time since he truly lost it. He knows he’s better than this; has been better than this. Should still be better than this.

 

But _she’s_ going to Coruscant with another man, to see some kriffing Mon Calamari ballet.

 

Ben just barely holds himself back from wailing on the hull, the other cargo, the blast door, anything he can get his hands on. It’s a struggle; he almost gives in and destroys a crate of backup fuel cells sitting nearby, something he can _not_ afford to do.

 

He’ll need them if he’s going to turn this ship around and get himself to Coruscant. That’s what he knows he must do, what Han would tell him to do.

 

Drained, he drops down onto the deck, careful not to sit too close to the sparking wire. Just as in his younger years, when he used to rage like this more regularly, his mood turns reflective now that he’s destroyed something.

 

Han was never very adept at handling his… ‘impetuous moments’, as Leia had called them. There were many aspects of fatherhood that turned the freewheeling Han Solo into a bumbling, awkward grump; none were so confounding to him as when Ben lost control of his emotions.

 

How can a man who’s spent his life holding his cards close to his vest understand a boy who feels too much?

 

But when the time had come, Ben had chosen him— chosen a path away from the mystifying power his mother and uncle wielded— and from then on, things had been better between them. They’d butted heads still, they’d bickered and debated and out-and-out argued, but there was an undercurrent of camaraderie, of tentative understanding, to their relationship.

 

Except at times like these.

 

Han would try to calm him, but if he failed (which was often), he’d shift quickly from calm to bargaining to irritation to a blind eye and a deaf ear. Ignored by his father, growled at by Chewbacca, his emotions would flare and then fade, a brief blaze starved of the oxygen necessary to feed it.

 

Maybe this was good parenting. Maybe it was not. Ben has given up that debate with himself; his father _tried_.

 

That was enough for him then, and it still is now.

 

And if Han trying and failing but trying again anyway is what led him down a path of criminality for a while, so be it. If it was what led to his father’s death, so be it. It is also what led him to her, and if removing a single link in the chain means he loses that one, the chain must remain unbroken, even if the links are full of flaws.

 

Besides, that is the past; that is the path he has already traversed.

 

Ahead of him is his future, and paths not yet explored.

 

He wants Rey. It’s always been her, he knows that now. If he wants Rey to choose him, he has the urgent impression he needs to be at that stupid ballet on Coruscant. The dreams, the vision of her, none of it has been sufficient.

 

He needs her to see him.

 

He needs to see her.

 

They need to speak, really speak. There is so much he has to say. (And he suspects there are things she wants to say as well. He wants to hear them. No, he _needs_ to hear them.) He needs to know if the damage is done, or if there is yet hope for him and her.

 

Calm now, thinking rationally once more, he picks himself up and dusts himself off. Smashing his booted foot onto the wire, he extinguishes the small fire that has ignited. Then he heads back to the cockpit, already beginning the mental calculations necessary to rechart his route.

 

There isn’t a moment to lose.

  

 

* * *

 

 

“So? What does Rey of Jakku think of my humble abode, and of Coruscant?”

 

The irony of the question does not escape Rey; Armitage’s apartment is anything but humble. A penthouse situated in a skyscraper so high that much of Galactic City, sprawling out below them in a sea of light-dotted buildings, is shrouded in cloud cover, it is festooned in all the same trappings of luxury that marked his personal yacht. Everywhere she looks the place is spotless, austere ivory and crimson and jet-black, deep carpeting and gleaming surfaces accented with polished, priceless metal and minerals.

 

Currently, her father and Corwin are playing a game of sabacc at a Laroon wood table in the open-plan living room; Verla has gone out, citing a need to ascertain the most current trends in Coruscanti fashion in order to dress herself appropriately for the ballet.

 

And Armitage has crossed the large room to stand beside Rey at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Together they gaze down at the ecumenopolis. It stretches as far as the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. The nighttime sky is like none Rey has ever experienced; not a single star is visible in the broad swath of amethyst overhead, polluted as it is by the undying glow of a quintillion city lights.

 

“Quite different from my Security Force days,” remarks Ergel, from the table. Rey glances back and finds him watching them with a complacent smirk.

 

It seems she has been forgiven, over the course of their journey from Bastatha to Coruscant.

 

“Quite different,” he continues, nodding to himself. “Much grander, by the looks of it.”

 

“Indeed,” Armitage agrees, before turning and leaning in towards Rey. “I was just here a few months ago, but it looks different to me as well.” He speaks in a low undertone, and each puff of cinnamon breath tickles her neck. “Brighter, perhaps. Illuminated, somehow… with you here.”

 

There is a single instant— no longer than the time it takes to snap one’s fingers, the time it takes to dart her gaze between her pleased-looking father and Armitage— where Rey considers Mashra’s advice. Considers the possibility of spending her life with this man.

 

How happy it would make her father. How Armitage could open doors for her family, could raise them up to the status they so intensely crave. How she could just… slip into this life of decadence— fine meals, fine clothes, fine accommodations wherever they go— like she belongs here. She could allow all this to happen to her.

 

Rey almost snorts aloud. As though there would be anything easy for her in binding herself to a person like Armitage, whose character she cannot discern, who makes his living, and seems proud to do it, off of morally questionable means, who chooses his friends not by their character but by their utility.

 

As though she could live with herself, if she made such a choice.

 

And when has her father ever done anything for _her_ , besides come back? And does that even qualify, when it was so clearly motivated by his diminished means and not any actual desire to reunite with his abandoned daughter? Nothing in the past shared by Ergel and Rey would warrant a sacrifice so great as her entire future. Not for his sake.

 

No.

 

It’s laughable, it really is.

 

She finally has a shot at happiness; she is not going to put the happiness of Ergel and Verla and Mashra before that. Not this time. This is about Rey, about the rest of Rey’s life; she has done her self-imposed penance, and she is finished with it.

 

“You have a beautiful home,” she answers at last, giving Armitage a tight smile. “And Coruscant is an… interesting planet.”

 

He nods at that, altogether satisfied, as though she has complimented him personally.

 

Studying his freckled face, his straight nose, the fine strawberry-blond lashes around his piercing eyes— blue in this light, although she could’ve sworn they were green before— Rey comes to a decision: she doesn’t care for him. The grin she gives him is fake, utterly fake.

 

Because in one sense, she is waiting. Yes. That’s true.

 

She is waiting as patiently as she can for the right moment to leave, the right moment to find _him_ , the right moment to speak her mind.

 

 _But in another sense,_ Rey thinks, as she returns her gaze to the sweeping cityscape below, _I am done with waiting._

 

 

. . .

 

 

So the days pass. There seems to be a never-ending succession of plans Armitage has made for them: day trips to museums, pod races, casinos, jatz clubs, and the parlors of Coruscanti high society, evenings spent dining at fancy restaurants where they serve laughably small plates of food and laughably large glasses of wine.

 

Rey locks herself in the enormous bedroom bestowed upon her by Armitage whenever she can steal a moment; she makes holoprojected calls to her friends in hushed tones, asking for updates on _his_ whereabouts.

 

 _We’re working on it,_ comes the response, from each of them. _Stay put. Be patient._ And then, at long last, the day before the ballet, from Luke and Mara:

 

_We’ve found him. He’s on his way to Coruscant. He’ll be there._

 

Finally, Rey can breathe with some measure of ease. But as quickly as relief comes, it is swamped by a different kind of nervousness: what will they say to each other, now that they have the chance? How can she explain to him how she feels, after all that has passed?

 

She barely sleeps the night before the ballet, and can neither eat nor focus the morning of. The group jets off to spend the day at some public hanging garden in the rejuvenated industrial district, but Rey feigns tiredness, and in the hours they are gone, she sits cross-legged in the middle of her sleeper, eyes closed, mind blank, attempting— despite what the Miraluka woman told her— to find _him_ in the Force.

 

To summon him.

 

He is there, as distant and warm a glowing light as Coruscant’s sun, and just as untouchable. Unreachable. But he _is_ there.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And then, as though she has blinked once and time has passed and the planet has turned without her even realizing it, the night of the ballet is upon her.

 

She stands before the window once more, peering down at the nocturnal landscape of dark buildings rising up through the clouds, bejeweled with lights of every color and brightness. Her gown— emerald green Fleuréline weave, high-collared with a scandalously low-cut back— clings to every filled-out curve of her body from shoulder to knee before flaring gently to the floor, a short train trailing behind her. Its material is soft against her skin. Luxurious.

 

No jewelry adorns her body save one piece: a Nabooian night pearl, strung from a chain of Haysian smelt around her neck. Only the barest traces of cosmetics enhance the long dark flutter of her lashes and the pale pink of her lips.

 

Her life— up until a few months ago— never called for this kind of finery, and although Rey feels very beautiful, very elegant, she also feels somewhat ungainly and awkward.

 

As she stares down at the city, waiting for the group— fidgeting with the top half of her hair, braided clumsily away from her face, the lower half flowing down past her shoulders— she feels a cool hand brush up her back.

 

She looks up to find Armitage at her side once more, dapper in his crisply-pressed tuxedo.

 

“You look marvelous,” he breathes, eyes poring over her figure. “Would that I could convince you to dress like this all the time.”

 

“I feel like an imposter,” she replies, and gives a slight roll of her shoulders, rebuffing his touch.

 

“Don’t we all?” By his smirk, Rey sees that in the face of her rebuff, he still remains thoroughly convinced of his own charisma, his own importance in the world. It is a smirk filled with triumph, with certainty, with inevitability. “If you _are_ an imposter, Rey of Jakku, you’re a damned good one. I’ve been duped, that’s for certain.”

 

The hand returns to her back, more insistent this time; his cool fingers sliding along her spine make her shiver.

 

“And you need only say the word. Accept my offer, and you’ll never worry about legitimacy or belonging again. Nor your other—” here he pauses just long enough for his eyes to flick back to the bedrooms, where Ergel and the others are still preparing, “…burdens. These things have a way of working themselves out when I’m around. When I’m in control.”

 

Things snap into focus all at once. The offer. He’d mentioned it on his ship, and he’s hinted at it not-so-subtly every day since then. She’s put it out of her mind, first out of petty embarrassment at having tuned him out, and later, because she didn’t want to expend mental energy on what exactly he might have been offering.

 

Because Rey is pretty sure she already knows.

 

This time, she takes a step away from him, drawing nearer to the window. His hand trails after her until she’s out of his reach, then it falls limply to his side. A second passes. She glances back; it is balled it into a fist. His air of relaxed amiability has suddenly evaporated; lips pressed into an even thinner line, his eyes are narrowed and seething.

 

“I think we’ll need to leave soon, if we’re to get to the ballet on time,” is all she can come up with.

 

She smiles back at him, but it is distant. Impersonal. Then she averts her gaze, turning to stare down at the city.

 

Not an answer, per se, but certainly in its state of being a non-answer… an answer all the same.

 

“Quite,” he snaps, and pivots towards the bedrooms.

 

Rey can only hope that _that_ will be the end of _that_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

By the time they pass through the majestic front entrance of the Galaxies Opera House— a series of arches under the many domed roofs of the historic building, held up by columns carved from white Ithorian marble and wine-hued velmstone— Rey’s need to see _him_ has reached a fever pitch.

 

Shod in pair a lightweight satyn slippers, another of Gozetta’s expenditures, her left foot taps a nervous rhythm on the red carpet of the lobby as Ergel, Corwin and Armitage station their party by one of its massive columns, so as to best behold who’s in attendance and allow themselves to be beheld in return.

 

Verla stands proudly beside Ergel, modeling the very latest Coruscanti fashion in a voluminous gown sewn from iridescent fabric that shines and shifts like abalone under the lobby’s bright lights, its sequined skirts pleated to emulate tentacles, its billowing sleeves rising up into stiff conch-shaped peaks at each shoulder, its neckline plunging down to reveal her decolletage. Her blond hair is teased into an elaborate bouffant above her glittering eyebrows.

 

She keeps her chin raised in the air, clearly in her element, offering tart nods to the passersby she deems worthy; Rey feels almost cheered by the sight. How long has Verla yearned for a life like this? What dreams has she secreted away in her heart?

 

What would it take, truly, for Verla to be happy with her lot in life?

 

The curiosity dissipates as she watches her sister blatantly snub a woman waving excitedly at her from across the room. The woman’s own gown is nowhere near as lavish as Verla’s, nor the men in her party so expensively besuited.

 

She bites back a sigh; Verla never makes it easy. But she’s too preoccupied to continue on that tangent. All she has is Luke and Mara’s word to go on that he will be here. They said he will; she trusts that.

 

“Rey, stand on the other side of Pa,” orders Verla in a clipped tone. “You’re blocking everyone’s view of me.”

 

She cooperates without protest; it hardly matters to her where she stands. Silently, she scans the crowd, ignoring the others’ insipid disparagement of the fellow patrons.

 

Every glimpse of broad shoulders, of dark waves, of a strong nose or even just of a tall Human man steals her breath away. But when they emerge into fuller view, they are all inevitably not him.

 

_Where is he?_

 

 _He_ must _be here._

 

_Oh, stars, let him be here. Let him have heeded Luke’s advice, let him have come._

 

Overhead, under a domed golden ceiling, hovers a great chandelier. It is shaped like the oblong dust-based rings of a planet, ombré shades of purple from a deep, rich violet at the outermost and to the innermost, a delicate lavender. They spin in silent chaos around the chandelier’s center, a glowing orb, bright as Coruscant Prime, almost too bright to look at.

 

Beneath it is the sweeping grand staircase, carpeted in red, that leads up to the theater and the balconied corridor running along the theater’s edge, supported by periodic columns. Doors leading into the private boxes are interspersed along its far wall. People are milling around up there, dressed in their finest, laughing and sipping from tall flutes of Blossom wine and green champagne.

 

On the stairs, too.

 

She spends half a second studying each face, just to be certain. Then she returns to her survey of the lobby floor.

 

 _This won’t do,_ she thinks _. I can’t see everyone._

 

There’s too many massive species walking around, too much ostentatiously styled hair, too many obstacles. She doesn’t have a clear view; what she needs is height.

 

Rey looks down at the glass of green champagne in her hand. Mind made up, she tosses it back in one swallow.

 

“I need another,” is all she says to the others, already drifting towards the bar closest to the stairs.

 

If she could just get some elevation, so as to have a proper view of the lobby…

 

The crowd is becoming more densely packed by the minute, but no one seems to be in a rush to head inside and find their seats. In fact, it seems to Rey that the general aura of excitement in the cavernous hall is based solely around this pre-show ritual, around this opportunity to rub shoulders with desirable and elite members of society.

 

Among the many, many types of faces and bodies she sees, she cannot help but notice that there are more than a few dressed in senator’s robes. Perhaps his mother is among them.

 

At last, she reaches the bar, and requests a refill. The tuxedoed Bothan bartender nods and turns to fill her glass; Rey takes the opportunity to do another sweep of the room, lifting herself up onto her toes as though it will help.

 

If only she’d conceded to Gozetta’s wishes and gone with the heeled shoes her sister had wanted to purchase. No matter. She’ll wander up the stairs a bit, once she has her drink. She is just turning back to the bar to accept her glass when she hears it, from somewhere in the crowd:

 

A deep voice. Like the rumbling of the earth when a pack of Happabores go storming by.

 

She whirls around, frenzied.

 

He’s here.

 

He’s here, he’s here, he’s here.

 

That was him she heard, she knows it, knows that voice, has carried the memory of it inside her since the first day she laid eyes on him.

 

The milling throng has grown even thicker, and now she must elbow her way through groups— offering faint apologies as she goes, hardly cognizant of anything besides finding him— as she tracks that baritone back to its source.

 

Like the skies parting, like the Force itself wills it: a path clears, and there he is.

 

“Oh, Ben,” she gasps, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

 

Dressed in a clean, sharp New Republic dress uniform, he wears tight trousers cut from a rich black wool tucked into boots the same color, shined so thoroughly they gleam. A gilded braid runs up the side of each leg.

 

And across his chest stretches his white jacket, brandished with medals whose meaning she does not know, as well as a buckled strap. A deep blue velvoid half-cape, hemmed in white fur, detailed with the insignia of the New Republic, is attached to the strap, and sits draped over one of his big shoulders. The forearms of his sleeves are covered in golden vambraces and his beautiful hands— how she wishes she could see them— are hidden by black gloves.

 

Standing a full head taller than the small circle of distinguished-looking senators around him, his hair is visibly clean, combed, almost… fluffy. It whisks back away from his face, complimenting his strong features.

 

He looks like a revelation; all Rey can do is stare.

 

For half a second, she considers the possibility that he might reject her. Again.

 

She’s not sure she could bear it.

 

Then his eyes slide over from the diminutive older woman standing next to him, dressed in her own fine gown— Senator Organa-Solo, she realizes— and they land on her.

 

“Rey!” he calls out.

 

He glances down at his mother, who is smiling ruefully at Rey. She nods, Rey nods back. A moment passes. Leia looks up at him and pats his arm, which she has been holding onto, then lets go of it and turns to the golden protocol droid at her other side, demanding his arm instead.

 

Ben is breaking away from the small group of senators. He is marching towards her. Rey has forgotten how her legs work, how her lungs work. Speech is a distant memory.

 

“Rey,” he repeats, breathless, halting just shy of bumping into her. “…Hi.”

 

And when he smiles— because he does, without hesitation— his eyes crinkle, and his cheeks do too, and his white teeth are crooked, and looking down at her, his chin is folded slightly in on itself, and the scar across his face is healed but still a puckered red line, but smells of the forest, and he is far and away the most beautiful man that she has ever seen. Mesmerized by the sight of him, she fights to hold back her tears.

 

He sighs, a happy sound. “There’s so much I want—”

 

“You’re here,” she croaks, and reaches for the golden vambrace, just to check that he’s real. He intercepts before she can grasp it, and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. He’s here. This is real. Not dream-real, but _actually_ real.

 

“I am.”

 

“I waited for you, and you came back.”

 

She stares up into his eyes, and he down into hers, and all at once, the buzz of a thousand different conversations echoing around the marbled hall falls away, and there is only this. His smile, and hers, and their fingers intertwined, and the calm at the heart of the storm.

 

At last, he clears his throat. “Actually, I was headed to Bastatha.”

 

“Bastatha…?”

 

“Yeah,” he says, puffing a noiseless laugh out through his nose. His smile turns wry, self-deprecating. “Some hero, huh?”

 

“You are,” she tells him, without a trace of irony.

 

“I wanted—”

 

She waits, but he’s interrupted himself, and lapsed back into silence. He’s looking at her dress, she realizes, really _looking_ at it. His breathing becomes heavy, panting almost, like he’s winded from the effort of standing here.

 

Like he’s winded from the effort of what he’s restraining himself from doing.

 

“You look beautiful,” he seems to settle on, after a time. “That… pearl…”

 

“Yes,” she says. “Yours.”

 

“You kept it.” He can’t look away from it. For a second, he works his jaw and stares. When he looks up again, his eyes are shining. “It suits you.”

 

“I—thank you.” Her cheeks go warm; undoubtedly a wicked blush is overtaking them. Then, quietly: “Ben, the dreams.”

 

“Yeah.” He nods, an affirmation. “Real— _all_ of it.”

 

The blush grows warmer.

 

“So pretty,” she thinks she hears him say, but it’s so faint, she can’t be sure. More a wounded exhalation than real words. But his eyes reinforce the point, so maybe he did. His free hand rises to stroke over her cheek.

 

Oh. He definitely did.

 

“I met a woman on Bastatha, she told me that what happened to us—how we could, that is, how we saw each other—she said it’s something Force users who are bonded can learn to do over time.”

 

She dimples up at him shyly, all of a sudden struck by diffidence. He’s here, and real, and they’re speaking, and his smile is so warm, his presence is so warm…

 

“Force bond,” he echoes.

 

“Didn’t Master Skywalker tell you—”

 

“Yeah,” he interrupts. “He did.” His thumb continues smoothing its way across her cheek, over and over. Is this indecent behavior for this kind of venue? Rey giggles to herself, a girlish sound, one she has not made in quite a while. As if she cares.

 

A step closer, almost between his feet. His gloved hand slides down, across her cheek, down, down the column of her neck. Holding the nape in his hand— she’d almost forgotten how large a man he is, how delicate he makes her feel— he pauses, a question, and when she nods, he caresses his way down to her bare back. And then he simply holds her in place, the warmth of his hand bleeding through the rasping leather of his glove.

 

She nearly drops her drink.

 

“Did you hear about Brixie and Rose?” she asks, tentative, hoping she will not have to watch hurt wash over his face.

 

It doesn’t; he merely nods. “I called her, after we left Batuu… straightened things out with her.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Rey, It was never—”

 

“I’d like to go back,” she confesses, giddy now with belated insight. “To Batuu.”

 

“You were so brave, that day. So quick to act.”

 

She knows without asking what day he’s referencing; what other day could he mean? Biting her lip, she twitches a shoulder. “Wasn’t the first bad tumble I've treated.”

 

“I’m sure.”

 

His breathing has calmed, but his gaze is no less intent, no less focused. She’d made the same observation of Armitage’s gaze, yet she sees now how they are night and day. When Armitage looks at her, she feels she is being dissected under a microscope; when Ben gives her the same attention, she feels… cherished. Nothing else exists in the galaxy but this moment, the two of them, one of his hands on her back, and the other holding hers tightly.

 

They are swaying together, slightly, rocking from foot to foot. How insane they must look, to anyone who is watching. There isn’t even any music playing.

 

“I’d… yeah,” he sighs. “It’d be good, to go back.”

 

“Stay a while, maybe,” she murmurs.

 

“Relax.”

 

“Have some fun.”

 

“Fun,” he repeats. “Fun is good, I hear.”

 

“From what _I_ hear, Shara Bey and Kes are elated,” she says. His brow furrows at the non-sequitur, so she clarifies. “It’s… helpful, to have a supportive family. Parents who want you to be happy. Not like…”

 

His face, gone paler than usual, falls.

 

“Like…” she tries again, but it hurts, _oh_ , how it hurts, to even say the words…

 

“Yours,” he breathes.

 

She nods, lips trembling.

 

“Rey. I’m so—”

 

But it’s too much, she thought she could bring this up but she can’t, it _hurts_ ; she shakes her head. Not yet, not here.

 

“It surprised me,” he recovers with, blinking too quickly, “Rose getting over Finn like that. Finn is… there aren’t many like him. A good man, a good leader—thought Rose loved that about him.”

 

“She did,” Rey replies. “She does. But… she and Brixie have something, too. A different thing.”

 

He gives a slight shrug. “A person doesn’t recover from that kind of devotion.” His full lips purse thoughtfully. “He ought not.” He’s leaning in, even closer, close enough to kiss her if he wanted, and suddenly she is nineteen again, breathless and desperate to know what his lips would feel like against her own. “Rey, he _does_ not.”

 

“I—oh,” she just manages to whisper. Heat pours off him, and she is a lazy cat in the sun, basking in it. She lets her eyes slip shut and pushes up onto her toes, lips pursed, craning her neck, reaching, reaching, reaching—

 

Something strange happens just then. The low buzz of conversation that has served as backdrop to this encounter falls away, leaving a silence so stark that a pin's drop could be heard in the great hall. It's enough to jolt them both. Rey opens her eyes to find Ben staring down at her, looking dazed. He is seeking some decision from her, some choice. She swallows heavily.

 

_It’s too strange; what is this silence?_

 

She has to know. So she looks away, towards the entrance, where the armor-clad leader of the Bastatha cartel is lumbering through the parted crowd, teeth bared in a menacing smile to all he passes. Rinnrivin Di is here. On Coruscant. At the Galaxies Opera House. His sycophants follow behind him, looking by turns smug or amused or both.

 

He stops by a small cluster of senators— none of whom Rey recognizes— and greets them, taking the time to call each by their name. His gravelly voice sounds out in the hush of the hall. With some small measure of nervousness, the senators return his greeting with genuflection, and his reptilian grimace grows wider.

 

When Rey tears her eyes away from the spectacle and turns back to him, Ben is glaring at them all, tensed, brows drawn together and working his jaw, a storm cloud of disbelief and horror darkening his features.

 

“What is _he_ doing _here_?” she whispers. “On a Core planet? In the heart of the New Republic? He’s the—”

 

“I know who he is,” Ben grits out. “And I know what he’s doing here. Rey—I’m sorry,” he pauses, just long enough to relax his jaw and release the tension in his muscles before continuing, “I have to go. I’ll… find you later? During intermission.”

 

He may have regained his composure somewhat, but he still looks rattled. As rattled as Rey feels.

 

“Alright.” She searches his face; all she finds is the same earnestness she remembers from happier days. It is enough. “Is everything okay?”

 

“It will be,” he assures her, and with some reluctance, he relinquishes his hold on her, then takes a step backward. “I’ll talk to you soon?”

 

“Yes,” she says, to his back, because he’s already spun and stormed off.

 

She watches him go, just like she always does. Not a second later, she sees him locate his mother, whose eyes— dark, expressive, so much like his— bore into Rey knowingly before she blinks and turns to her son. He leans down to speak into her ear. Then, gently, he offers her his arm, and she takes it, and they disappear into the crowd.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You missed it,” Verla hisses to her, as they make their way up the grand staircase along with everyone else, “Rinnrivin paid us very special favor, just now. He stopped right in front of us _and_ shook Pa’s hand _and_ inquired as to how his project was going. And where were _you_?”

 

“My drink,” she answers feebly, lifting up the bubbling glass of green champagne that somehow survived her encounter with Ben.

 

“Liar.” That turns Rey’s head; her sister’s painted face is ruddy, contorted with barely-contained rage. “I saw you, you ungrateful wretch. You were talking to _him_.”

 

Rey doesn’t feel cowed by her sister’s vitriol; rather, she grits her teeth and breathes through her nose, choking back the anger that swarms within.

 

 _And what of it?_ she could say. _What’s it to you? I’ll talk to whomever I like._

 

No, no. She won’t give Verla even that much. She’ll give her nothing. That’s what that unkindness deserves: nothing.

 

Armitage leads their party past many, many doorways along the corridor. Finally, he stops in front of one, then pulls back a heavy velvoid curtain to reveal a private box with six seats. His smile is as pinched and his eyes as furious as Verla’s.

 

“After you,” he says to the sisters, in an acidic tone.

 

If Rey thought the lobby of the Galaxies Opera House was impressive, that is nothing compared to the actual theater. She has to tilt her head back once she’s seated herself in the unforgiving metal armchair, in order to take it all in.

 

The cavernous room is round, seats arranged in spoke-like sections rising up from the floor, reminding her of the arena stands at pod races. Above those stands, dozens of strata of boxes just like Armitage’s climb up along the curved walls, far above her head. Every conceivable species seems to be represented in the crowd filtering in, all dressed in their planet or culture’s finest garments, all impeccably groomed and devastatingly fashionable.

 

And in the center of all these seats is what she supposes to be the stage. Rey has never seen a stage, so she is not sure what she should have expected, but this one intrigues her nonetheless.

 

There is nothing on it. In fact, nothing _could_ stand upon it; it is incandescent, lights of white and violent shining up towards the vaulted ceiling.

 

Over those lights float a dozen shimmering, aqueous bubbles of varying sizes. They range from the largest, in which two beautiful titian giant squid swim in lazy circles around each other, to a bubble that holds a starfighter-sized cloud of bioluminescent plankton, to the smallest, no bigger than the electric eel whirling around inside.

 

The creatures all appear to be waiting for their cue to begin, patiently swimming within their own bubbles, periodically breaching the confines to travel to another’s. Their movements are languid yet purposeful, and Rey feels peaceful, watching them.

 

A handbill lands in her lap, tossed there by Verla, who has seated herself to her left. “You are here as the guest of _Armitage_ ,” she growls, picking up where they left off. “You are at his leisure. Get that through your thick head.”

 

Armitage, lowering himself into the seat to her right, has overhead Verla’s mutterings. His expression softens. Free of his anger, or perhaps setting it aside for the time being, he declares in a benevolent tone, “It is my pleasure to have invited you. What does Rey think of the Galaxies Opera House?”

 

“Magnificent,” she answers truthfully, all the while searching the surrounding boxes for _his_ face.

 

Realizing she’s been ignored, Verla angrily buries her nose in her handbill.

 

Her eyes land on a box on the opposite side of the theater— so far away that the patrons seem very small— where Rinnrivin and his cronies sit. _Why is he here? Is it some sort of statement?_ she puzzles, as she continues her survey. _Or maybe the better question is: what does he have to gain by making such a statement?_

 

When she spots Ben, thoughts of Rinnrivin are driven away by her delight; his box— occupied by him, his mother and her coterie, and the golden protocol droid, a 3PO unit— is only two down from hers. He’s turned away from her in his chair, but like he can sense her gaze on him, he swings around and catches her eye.

 

She smiles, and nods. He reciprocates. Her delight settles into a calmer kind of contentment, like a warm blanket wrapped around her.

 

Armitage leans over to rest his elbow on her armrest. In her ear, he snarls, “Something catch your eye?”

 

“Just taking it all in,” she bluffs, but the way Ben’s expression shifts does not escape her, just as Armitage’s proximity to Rey has not escaped him.

 

Kriff.

 

Ben is still frowning when Leia, seated on the far side of the booth from Rey, taps on his shoulder. He turns then, to speak to her, and Rey feels unmoored, wanting nothing more than to reassure him of her affections.

 

Why hadn’t she lead with that, before? Why did she blather on about Batuu?

 

Music begins, an ethereal melody played on what she supposes might be some kind of flute. There are no musicians to be seen; she leans over the balustrade of the box to check if they are located on the ground floor of the theater.

 

“They’re in another room,” Armitage tells her, jerking his chin towards the large pipes that line the walls, up near the ceiling. “The architect didn’t want them to impede on the aesthetic splendor.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Perhaps she can reach out to him through the Force; perhaps he can sense her feelings, as they used to be able to do. Just as she is preparing to try, she feels Armitage’s breath on her neck once more. She turns; he is still leaning on her armrest.

 

“Mon Calamarian,” he begins, “is such a notoriously difficult language for Humans to learn. But I’ve heard you can read it?”

 

He’s holding his handbill in his lap. At a glance, Rey discerns that the characters are not Aurebesh but Mon Cal.

 

“Only a bit, from some primers I found in a ship database.”

 

“More than me.” His tone is jovial once more, almost as if the tense moment between them at the apartment or the angry way he looked at her minutes earlier had never happened. “Could I persuade you to translate?”

 

She musters a polite smile. “Squid Lake, a tragic ballet in four acts,” she recites, reading from her own handbill. Made from flimsiplast, it is lightweight in her hand, and a scent clings to it which reminds her of the Silver Sea’s briny winds. An excellent souvenir for Gozetta.

 

“Act one. On the planet Dac, Yoth Gridoomben dwells in the dark depths of the Salinrerian Sea, cursed to live as a fearsome giant squid. Meanwhile, the handsome prince Morn Lo is being pressured to choose a bride.” She almost laughs aloud at the next line. “He wants to marry for love, but his mother, the queen, wants him to make an advantageous match.”

 

 _Relatable_ , she thinks, before concluding, “His friends try to cheer him up by suggesting they go on a squid hunt.”

 

“Fascinating,” Armitage murmurs.

 

She nods. “In act two, Morn comes to a mysterious rift in the seabed. He presses forward into the dark crevasse, and finds a shoal of squid. But when he raises his harpoon, one of them changes into a beautiful Mon Calamari woman. She tells him her name is Yoth and that she’s been cursed by the Quarrenese Sith lord, Darth Gulomi. She and the others are only squid by day. At night they return to being Mon Calamari—but only in the rift. If they try to leave, they are returned to their squid form.”

 

Something about the tragedy in all this hits too close to home for her, but if pressed, she is not sure she could explain why.

 

_Is it because they live their lives as prisoners, bound to a terrible place, as you once were? As your father wishes you to continue being?_

 

“Yes?” prompts Armitage.

 

“No, nothing.” She swallows. “Anyway. The rift was created when, in her sorrow over the curse, Yoth’s mother tore Dac’s seabed in half.”

 

“A woman scorned,” he remarks lightly.

 

“Ha,” she says, mirthless. “Darth Gulomi appears and Morn wants to kill him but Yoth convinces him not to, because if he does, the curse can never be broken. She tells him the curse can only be broken if someone who has never loved before declares their love for her.”

 

“No mean feat, to find a man like that. He should be valued, if he is found.” The look he’s giving her is pointed, his words loaded with meaning. _He’s referring to himself,_ she deduces, and just barely checks her impulse to roll her eyes.

 

A grimace is the best she can offer him. “So after Darth Gulomi disappears, Morn breaks his harpoon over his knee, vowing to win her trust and someday, her love. But the sun rises, and she and the others become squid once more. That’s the end of act two.”

 

“A grand gesture,” he scoffs, “if a stupid one.”

 

She frowns at him. “How so?”

 

“Oh, he should try to save her, if he can, as she is beautiful and he’s in need of a wife,” Armitage allows. “But there’s no reason to relinquish his weapon.”

 

“I see,” she says.

 

“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you? I’ve seen you, carrying around that crude staff you forged on Jakku.”

 

“Have you?” She feels faint, and slightly ill, at the idea that he’s been watching her. Observing her.

 

“Long before our paths crossed on Batuu, I’d heard of you and your family. And the Damerons, of course, and by connection, the Organa-Solos. But I was most intrigued by your story.”

 

 _Why?_ is the question she wants to demand of him. _I’m no one._ “Ah,” is what she coughs out.

 

“It’s my opinion that you’re far too modest, considering what you survived. If I’d lived through what you must have…” his eyes glow with inscrutable emotion, and his voice sinks into a dangerously smooth purr, “I would never let anyone forget it.”

 

“And—you? You grew up on—” she tries, uncomfortable, but he interjects:

 

“Everything I heard about you was intriguing—that you were kind, and fair, that you had a soft heart. Especially for the downtrodden and defenseless.”

 

“Someone had to be.”

 

“That you were beautiful. Very beautiful. All truthful reports.”

 

It’s that word— reports— that drives her discomfort into revulsion. Does he mean literally? Who was reporting on her? Why?

 

“But I had always lamented,” he continues, “that you were called Rey of Jakku. Shouldn’t you have a second name?”

 

Rey shrugs. “Ergel doesn’t.”

 

“But I do,” he says, angling himself closer, his tone decisive. “I wonder if you have truly considered, Rey, what a life with me might look like.”

 

He has not given up on his thoughts of a union, it seems.

 

“I have.”

 

It’s as if he hasn’t heard her, or has chosen not to. “Your obscurity, your—”  his eyes once again flick back to Ergel and Corwin, who are snickering jovially together at some woman’s ornate headdress, and Verla, who sits poised like a statue, her eyes roving desperately around the theater to see if anyone is watching her, “—connections.” He tips his head in the direction of the Organa-Solo box. “Your storied past. All of it would be forgotten. You could travel, if you wanted. In style. You could receive a formal education. You could command armies. You could be free.”

 

Rey shakes her head. “I already… am free?”

 

One coppery eyebrow vaults towards his brow. “Are you?”

 

“Uh…”

 

“I am not a man easily deterred from the things I want,” he tells her, under his breath. “Remember that. Perhaps in time you’ll come to see the value in such an attribute—see how it could serve both our needs.”

 

Now it is Rey who can feel Ben’s eyes on her, burning a hole into her bare back. But when she glances across the theater at his booth, he is staring down at his handbill. She wonders if he has ducked at the last moment, so as not to be caught in the act. She remembers her resolution to reach out to him, but just then the otherworldly overture goes quiet, and then there is a blaring of horns, which settles into a rumbling, droning, symphony. The two squid in the center bubble take their places, as do the other sea creatures.

 

“Think on it,” Armitage bids her.

 

She has no chance to reply; the ballet has begun.

 

 

. . .

 

 

But more than a few times, during those first two acts, she feels Ben watching her. She never catches him in the act, but his gaze is warm and heavy and comforting as ever, when her own drifts back to the performance.

 

Though the production is undeniably breathtaking, she finds it difficult to concentrate.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She finds him in the corridor during intermission.

 

“Rey,” he says, reaching for her hand again. “I didn’t want to leave you before, but I…”

 

“Your mother?” she prompts.

 

“Yes.” He gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “Those senators Rinnrivin was talking to, uh… she needed to know.”

 

“I understand. It’s alright, you’re here now.”

 

“Good. Good.” Some of his nervous energy seems to bleed away, but not all of it. He’s working his jaw, just like old times, as he stares down at her. “Liking the ballet, so far?”

 

“It’s incredible. I’m a bit… distracted, though,” she teases.

 

“You’re here with…” he trails off, waiting for Rey to fill in the blank, and at once, she sees how he’s misinterpreted what she said.

 

“No—”

 

He huffs again. “Armitage Hux.”

 

“My family,” she corrects, “was invited by Mister Hux.”

 

“Ah.” He takes a step closer. “You and him…” His throat bobs as he tries to articulate the question. “You were sitting together.”

 

 _Were you watching us?_ she wants to ask. _Were you trying to pretend not to be jealous, the way I pretended not to be, during that day on Rhinnal, or all those dinners at the Great House?_

 

“He wanted help translating the handbill,” she mumbles, once again ashamed of that recurring fantasy. Of Ben, helpless with jealousy, overcome by need.

 

He nods, exhales. “You’re good with languages. I remember that about you.”

 

“Armitage isn’t,” she jokes.

 

“He cares for you,” he says, gravely serious.

 

“No, Ben, I—”

 

“Rey, darling,” comes Armitage’s voice, cloyingly sweet, from behind her. His cool hand clutches up hers, ripping it from Ben’s, and the other lands on her waist in a vice-like grip. “Come back to your seat? You _must_ explain the third act to me, or I’ll be hopelessly lost when it begins, and—” he halts, as though just now noticing Ben’s presence. His lip curls into a sneer. “Captain Solo, is it?”

 

Ben gives a tight nod. His eyes dart back and forth between the pair of them. Mortification strikes at Rey, rendering her numb, and voiceless.

 

_No, not after all this time, not after everything—_

 

_Say something, Rey. Dammit all, say something!_

 

“The ballet will begin again any moment, Rey,” says Armitage, still oozing that ingratiating faux-sweetness. “Come sit.”

 

“Don’t—” she growls.

 

“It’s okay.” Ben gives her a tight smile. “I have to go, too.”

 

“We should—we should talk after,” Rey presses, staring up at him. “I want to talk to you after, Ben.”

 

With a dark look in Armitage’s direction, Ben bows his head.

 

“Promise?” she cries.

 

“Yeah—yes, Rey,” he replies, tonelessly. “I promise.”

 

“Fine. Alright. Meet me, after. Right here.”

 

He nods again, then turns back towards his box.

 

Armitage leads her to her seat, one hand clutching hers, the other still squeezing her waist. As they go, he peppers her with questions about acts three and four. _Distracting me_ , she thinks, _or trying to._

 

Why does she let him? Why does her brain grind to a halt every time she sees Ben?

 

_Because you’re afraid of opening your mouth and ruining it, like you did last time._

 

_Because you’re afraid you’re both too different now, and neither the dreams nor the Force bond will not be enough. That he will grow tired of you._

 

_Because some small mean-spirited part of you wants to see him burn with envy, as you did._

 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

 

No. She catches herself, falling into her old ways of thinking, and begins to internally chant: _You are not stupid. You are allowed to be flawed. You can make this right._

 

She watches him return to his seat from across the theater.

 

_Make this right, Rey._

 

He does not look her way.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The ballet begins again, in just as much splendor; the spectacular lights and effects and booming symphony and sinuous creatures of the sea perform a seamless dance together. A few minutes in, Armitage rises from his chair.

 

“What’s wrong, Armie?” asks Verla.

 

“Champagne’s gone right through me,” he says. “Please excuse me.”

 

Rey does not bother to look away from the performance. It really _is_ something. But once he’s gone, she _does_ spare a peek over at Ben.

 

His seat is empty.

 

Dread reaches for her with its razor-sharp claws, freezing her where she sits.

 

_Something isn’t right._

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ben watches that redheaded weasel rise from his chair and retreat back through the box, and knows what he must do.

 

Muttering an excuse to his mother, who pats his arm absentmindedly, only half-listening, never for a minute tearing her eyes from that Nikto thug, Rinnrivin, he too exits his box. His timing is excellent; he catches Hux just as he’s passing by.

 

With no idea what he’s going to say, he purposefully places himself in Hux’s way.

 

“‘Scuse me,” he grumbles.

 

“You’re excused,” sneers Hux. “Now move.”

 

Ben huffs out a laugh, which serves to infuriate the man, judging by his angry flush. _Fine by me_ , he thinks. Let him squirm.

 

“She’s too good for you, y’know,” Ben tells him. Yes. Good. This is good. Straight to the quick.

 

“And she isn’t for you?” Hux sends back.

 

“Doesn’t matter,” he shrugs. “She _wants_ me.”

 

Hux’s smile turns canny. Smug. “ _Or_ she’s letting you down easy.”

 

That hits home, though Ben does his damndest not to let it show.

 

_After all, she’s done that to him before, hasn’t she? Is she planning to again? Is she simply mistaking the cruelty of giving him false hope as the mercy of kindness?_

 

“I trust her,” he says. And he does. The dreams, the Force bond; they’re not scared kids anymore. She’s not going to bolt, and she’s not going to send him packing. Not this time. Not when she sees he's brought the _Falcon_ , just for her. 

 

“How quaint,” Hux says dismissively. “You may trust her, but I _understand_ her. I understand what it is to have a hateful family, to come from nothing. The son of a princess could never—”

 

“She loves me, pal.”

 

Hux’s mouth twists into an ugly, angry pout. “Is that so?” he jeers. “Then why has she accepted _my_ proposal of marriage, I wonder?”

 

Dread drags at his stomach like a millstone, like the terror of flying a starfighter that’s been hit, that mad smoking spiral towards death, towards the end of all things…

 

“She didn’t,” he says, but his voice sounds weak to his own ears. Faint, and far away. “You’re full of shit.”

 

Hux is exultant, practically preening. “Go ask her, if you want to embarrass yourself.” He cocks his head. “Or simply consider the truth in it. Think about where she comes from, Captain Solo—think about her relations. Choosing me is the right and natural choice.”

 

“Get karked!”

 

“I plan to,” Hux smarms. “Often, and with great fervency. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

 

 _But the dreams…_ he reasons. _We were together. I felt that. She did too._

 

 **_Only her subconscious_** _,_ growls a fiendish voice in his mind.

 

_But the Force bond…_

 

**_She never chose that; neither did you._ **

 

_But the pearl…_

 

**_Why wouldn’t she wear it? It’s a valuable bauble, nothing more._ **

 

_But the way she looked at me…_

 

**_Your own wishful thinking._ **

 

_But we almost kissed…_

 

**_Or so you assume._ **

 

Doubt blinds him, fear deafens him, memories of heartbreak past have rendered him mute. He's missed his chance; he's already blown it.

 

He's failed.

 

One second, his hands are fisted at his side, the next he is pulling back and using his weight and momentum to swing at Hux— a surge of satisfaction washing over him when Hux’s head snaps back from the blow— and the second after that, the cold barrel of a blaster is digging into his skull.

 

“I wouldn’t do that again if I were you,” a security droid warns him, monotone. “Not inside the opera house.”

 

“He hit me, the animal!” screeches Hux.

 

He spits at the ground, splattering pink-tinted saliva on Ben’s shiny boots. Despite the weapon against Ben’s head— his hands are raised in the air, a white flag— Hux takes a step back, never tearing his eyes from Ben’s. Then another.

 

When he deems the distance between them safe, he taunts, “Jealousy suits you as ill as heroism did, Captain Solo. Might I suggest a return to the… cargo trade? It seems a fitting profession for jilted elder bachelors—as I’m sure you well know.”

 

Ben says nothing, too anguished for speech, the cold metal against his scalp reminding him he is not allowed to respond with fists. What's the point, anyway? He's failed.

 

The puce shade begins to drain from Hux’s face, returning him to his pallid freckled self.

 

“We all become our fathers,” he muses serenely, recovered now, but careful not to turn his back on Ben. “Whether we like it or not. I am destined to become a great man, as Brendol was. And you?”

 

Now almost to the doorway of his box, Hux bends forward into a mocking bow.

 

“You, as Han Solo was, are destined for failure. Don’t drag her down with you.”

 

He snickers at his own jab, wipes the trickle of blood from his split lip, and disappears inside.

 

“Are we going to have a problem, Captain Solo?” asks the security droid.

 

“No,” he rasps out. “We’re not. I’m done here.”

  

 

* * *

 

 

By the beginning of the fourth act— with no Ben in sight, and Senator Organa-Solo vanished too— Rey’s panic feels like a noose tightening around her neck. Armitage’s fat lip has not escaped her notice, either. Using the same excuse as him, she gives her best fake smile as she slips out into the corridor, determined to find Ben.

 

He couldn’t have left, could he? When he promised he would stay, that they would talk?

 

Did he meet Armitage out here?

 

Did they exchange words?

 

Did Ben give him that bruised mouth?

 

Rey is thorough; her sense of foreboding demands it. She checks each bar down in the lobby, she walks every meter of the endless corridors that encircle each level of the theater, she ducks into every ‘fresher she can find, she is even so bold as to poke her head into his box for a second, just to see if somehow her eyes deceived her.

 

They haven’t.

 

He’s gone.

 

The recriminations flow freely now. _Stupid_. _How could you stand there and let Armitage say those things? Why didn’t you speak up, why didn’t you just insist on speaking to him then and there?_

 

_Why didn’t you grab his hand and run from all this?_

 

Her throat feels clogged, like rapidly-hardening permacrete has been poured down her gullet. Hovering outside the doorway to Armitage’s theater box, she swipes at her eyes and takes several deep breaths.

 

Blind panic, useless castigation, will not solve this.

 

One final effort: Rey taps into the Force. Eyes shut, she searches for him. Reaches for him.

 

All she finds is cold, empty nothing.

 

 _Not again. Not again. Please, no,_ she silently begs. _Please, Ben. Don’t do this to me._

 

But there’s nothing for it. He’s gone.

 

She returns to her seat.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Though she maintains a stoic facade through to the end of the ballet— seeing none of it, hearing none of it— it begins to crumble on the strained ride back to Armitage’s apartment.

 

He flies her there in his sleek, shiny, two-person cityspeeder, Verla and Ergel and Corwin following behind in a slightly less fashionable airspeeder. As he navigates the skylanes of Coruscant, he attempts to maintain a conversation, but it is lopsided.

 

Rey does not say a word.

 

(It is not the old desolation that stills her tongue; rather, she is too busy planning her next step to engage with Armitage. She cannot stay, that much is clear. She will not. But dismay at Ben’s disappearance turns her thoughts sluggish. What if he is truly gone forever this time, and his leave-taking was spurred by what she said or did not say to him in the brief time they had together?

 

Has she failed him, and worse yet, failed the promise she made to herself?)

 

When she begins to weep, Armitage attempts to take her hand.

 

She slaps it away, as she wishes she had done earlier.

 

The rest of the ride is conducted in stony silence.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Once they’ve returned to Armitage’s apartment, Rey moves swiftly through the cold echoing hallways, headed straight for her room. So upset, so lost to her cogitation, so intent on figuring out how to fix this is she, that she does not notice Verla has followed her until the door of her bedroom slides shut behind her with a hiss, and she hears the ominously quiet voice of her sister.

 

“You’re going to ruin everything. Again.”

 

Rey whirls around. From Verla’s tone, she might have imagined she’d have narrowed eyes, clenched fists, limbs rigid with ire, but she doesn’t. She looks shockingly unconcerned; leaned against the wall beside the door. Her arms are crossed loosely, lips pressed together. A neutral expression.

 

But her voice.

 

That low pitch speaks volumes.

 

“I don’t—” tries Rey, but she’s interrupted:

 

“You were flirting with him, that Captain. And Armie saw. You offended him. You embarrassed me. And Pa.”

 

“When do I _not_ embarrass you?” Rey asks through a tired laugh, turning from Verla as she proceeds to pull out the pins holding her braids in place.

 

She meets Verla’s eyes in the vanity mirror; her sister watches her, impassive, posture still relaxed.

 

“Besides,” she adds, “I thought you’d be happy to have him all to yourself. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

 

“Pa wants other things—and so does Armie,” her sister replies. “He wants you—he asked you for your hand in marriage, you little idiot—but you’re kriffing it all up. Just like you always do.”

 

Marriage.

 

To Armitage.

 

To even think it is an anathema.

 

 _Breathe,_ Rey reminds herself. _Keep breathing._ Calmly— as calmly as she can— she turns back to Verla, and crosses her own arms.

 

“Why are you like this, Verla?” she wonders aloud, changing the subject. She adopts her own lean against the vanity. “What did I ever do to you?”

 

It’s a standoff; both sisters lean at opposite ends of the opulent bedroom, arms crossed, staring each other down. And whereas in all the years that have come before— all the disagreements that have flared between them— Rey has always been the one to fold, and avert her gaze, and apologize, and make nice, because she wanted so badly for her sister to soften towards her, because she wanted so badly to be loved and to return that love, tonight there is nothing in Rey that feels soft or yielding.

 

Not after watching him walk away, not after he has disappeared on her _again_. Not with the wild suspicions swirling around her mind.

 

So she narrows her eyes, and returns her sister’s steely gaze.

 

At last, an answer comes, spat out like Verla has something foul-tasting lingering on her tongue:

 

“It’s not what you’ve done. It’s who you _are_.”

 

“I’m your sister,” she returns.

 

Verla shakes her head. “It’s how people look at you when you enter a room. That Captain, Armie, the low life Gozetta’s hitched to.”

 

Stunned, Rey gapes at Verla. But Verla is not finished.

 

“I hate it,” she seethes. “No one has _ever_ looked at me that way—what makes you so kriffing special?”

 

It strikes Rey that it is not anger alone causing the slight tremor in Verla’s voice. There is hurt, too. Hurt that has gone unspoken for far too long.

 

“I don’t know,” is the honest answer she gives, in a humbled hush. “I—I can’t say. But that’s _not_ my fault. And you’re right—it’s not something I’ve done _to_ you.”

 

Rey knows what it feels like to access an emotion which has long been frozen, the way it all comes tumbling down, and she can see the signs of that avalanche on Verla’s face. Her sister’s lips twitch with the urge to speak, to unburden herself. Rey holds her tongue so as to afford Verla the opportunity.

 

“You should’ve left Jakku,” Verla says, voice cracking. “Long before we got back. Why didn’t you? Why’d you stay there, like a simpleton? Who _stays_ on Jakku?”

 

She blinks. There will be more tears, she realizes, recognizing the tell-tale burn in her eyes. This is a night for them. “I just… I wanted to be with you. All of you.”

 

“And _I_ was happy the way things were! With Ma and Pa and me and Goz. Then we came back, and Ma died, and—and I had to live with people looking at _you_ like you were the moon and all the stars.” Verla’s expression is a tortured moue; Rey thinks she might be fighting back tears of her own.

 

But knowing Verla, Rey doubts she’ll let them fall. Her sister never lets herself be vulnerable like that. Not in front of Rey.

 

“Who looked at me that way?”

 

“Every damn customer who ever passed through our bar. It makes me _sick_.”

 

Even as Rey prepares to ask the question that has haunted her for years, she braces herself for an answer she might not like. Pulling in a ragged breath, she asks, “Verla, do you hate me?”

 

Verla shrinks back, staring at her with something like fear in her wide green eyes. She says nothing. Her lip curls into an angry grimace, but otherwise she does not speak.

 

“I don’t hate you,” Rey tells her. “But—I don’t know if I can be around you anymore. Maybe not for a long time. I need… I need… to go live a life away from you, I think. And I think you need the same thing. So… I’m not coming back to Bastatha.”

 

“Your things are there,” Verla points out, like a sullen child. She blinks a few times, but her eyes shine wetly.

 

Rey huffs, shaking her head. “They’re just things. I took what I needed with me.”

 

“Ergel won’t be happy with you. And Armitage—”

 

“Was never going to be,” she cuts her off. “Neither of them. I get that now. I wish…”

 

 _I wish you could see it too,_ is what she considers saying. _I wish you could find some peace; I wish you could free yourself from our father and everything he passed on to you. I wish you could understand that you are gifted in ways that I am not, and that if no one ever looked at you the way they did me, it is not because of a lack of talent or brains or beauty. It is because you are bitter, and mean._

 

_I wish you realized that you could change._

 

She settles for: “I hope you find your own way, Verla.” Then she crosses the room to the massive sleeper, and picks up her satchel. Throwing it over her shoulder, she adds, “Good luck.”

 

As she strides towards the door, Verla pushes herself off the wall and takes a step to the side, so she is obstructing Rey’s path.

 

“If you go,” she grounds out, through clenched teeth, “We’re done with you. You don’t come crawling back to us when you’re out of credits and desperate.”

 

“Like you did to me?” Rey chokes out a wry laugh, though giving voice to the truth wounds her deeply. But she sees it there, in the overly bright glean in Verla’s eyes: a glimmer of recognition, a moment of acknowledgement.

 

It is enough. It has to be enough.

 

“Don’t worry.”

 

She takes a step forward; when Verla does not move, Rey raises her hand and calls upon the Force, within and without, and gently raises Verla up into the air. Verla blanches, and sucks in a horrified gasp, and begins to flail wildly. Rey does nothing more than set her down in her former post, beside the door. Unharmed. Her sister’s mouth opens and closes; useless, irate sputterings issue forth.

 

She is no threat to Rey. She never was, as Rey never was to her; Rey can only hope that someday she accepts that.

 

“You don’t have to wait for me, Verla,” she says, tone gentle, features settled into a resolved smile. “All this? It’s yours. I’m not coming back.”

 

Once again silenced, it is Verla who gapes now, her jaw hanging open.

 

Rey shrugs. It’s a poor farewell, an even poorer final word, but she has tried so hard with Verla over the years, and has received next to nothing in return. She’s finished. So with that, she passes out of the bedroom, and Armitage Hux’s apartment, and his building, and an era of her life.

 

She does not wish him or her father any farewell at all.

 

And she does not cry.

 

 

. . .

 

 

But the skies of Coruscant do. They weep a steady onslaught of tears, each one stinging and ice-cold as they pelt her exposed back and neck. She ducks into a public ‘fresher somewhere along the way, fumbling out of the green gown and slippers, and into warm sturdy clothes, a rain-resistant poncho, and her soft, worn, gorraslug-leather boots.

 

The underworld of Coruscant, where the ground streets lie, is nothing like its soaring buildings, nothing like the elegant transports racing along its skylanes, nothing like the genteel attendees of Squid Lake.

 

It is dark, and flooded, and filthy with a planet-city’s worth of grime caked onto every surface. Homes— shanties, really— are layered densely on top of each other, like an endless catacomb of the not-yet-dead. There are hardly any landcraft or speedercraft in the alleys besides those of the patrolling Coruscant Security Force. This a place for the poor and dispossessed, and as Rey meanders from alley to alley, leaving the splendor of Armitage’s apartment and the Federal district behind her, those alleys grow ever-narrower, ever-filthier, ever-darker.

 

Ever more like a labyrinth of canyons.

 

She has no money. So maybe this is where she belongs. Maybe this is where she has always belonged.

 

( _Is this the price of all that opulence?_ she wonders. _Is this what the mirror shows, when you hold it up to a place like Coruscant?_

 

_And what would the mirror show if held up to herself?_

 

_Or to Ben?_

_And where does he belong in all of this?_

_How can she find him, how can she fix this?_

 

Can _she fix this?_ )

 

She forces herself to keep walking. After only an hour, her boots are inundated with the cold rainwater, her numbed feet like anchors that must be dragged along the pavement. Ignoring that the best she can, she shuts her eyes, and trusts her instincts. At each intersection, whenever the alley she is traveling down diverges, she asks the Force.

 

Each time, the Force answers.

 

And that is how she finds herself at the Galactic City Westport, a sprawling art deco behemoth of a building that, once she’s taken a turbolift up to its docking bay level, seems to go on forever, hangar after hanger bustling with departing and arriving spacecraft.

 

It’s much more chaotic than her last spaceport experience— landing in Hanna City, all those months ago— because the port is much bigger, older, and less well organized. Rey finds a forgotten plaque on one of its bronze-faced walls:

 

_Began construction in 25 BBY, opened in 24 BBY. Dedicated to Senator Amidala of Naboo._

 

She thinks about that, turning the name Amidala name over and over in her mind, while she spends the next hour searching for any sign of a ship headed where she needs to go. Finally, she spots a huddle of blue-faced Pantorans gathered near a freighter in a nearly-empty hangar.

 

“Are any of you the pilot?” she asks. The Pantoran closest to her shakes his head; the one standing next to him narrows her yellow eyes at Rey for a moment, then holds up a finger to signal Rey should wait.

 

She turns and heads up the boarding ramp, then reappears a few minutes later with a middle-aged Twi’lek man dressed in an old Republic flightsuit, his heavy mauve-and-beige lekku draped forward over his barrel chest.

 

“You wanted to speak to the pilot?” he says to Rey.

 

“Where is this ship headed?”

 

She’s proud of how strong her voice is, how little it wobbles.

 

“Chandrila.”

 

A deep sigh of relief escapes her before she can stop it, but she’s not home free yet. “I need passage.”

 

“Sure,” the pilot says, with a shrug. “Two thousand credits.”

 

“I don’t—I can’t—” she stammers. “I don’t have that.”

 

He presses his lips together in a bland smile. “Tough break.”  

 

“Please.” Rey takes a step closer to him. She is drenched, she is half-frozen, she is tired, she is emotionally spent. “I _need_ to go to Chandrila.”

 

“I’m sure you do—but I need credits. More passengers, more weight. More weight, more fuel. More fuel, more credits. Get it?”

 

“Do you barter?” she blurts out, distress getting the better of her. “I have things I could trade.”

 

One of his lekku gives a twitch; long creases form along his mauve brow. “What kinda things?”

 

Rey slides her satchel around to her front, out from under the poncho, and hurriedly opens it.

 

Not the postcard, not the flowers, not the sketchbook. They’re of no value, anyway. Not the handbill; that she must save for Gozetta. And not the pearl hidden beneath her clothing.

 

Not for all the credits in the Galaxy.

 

She lifts up the holoprojector. He make an indifferent ‘tsk’ sound.

 

In that case, there is precisely one item in her satchel that holds any significant monetary value, and though it breaks her heart to do it, she grabs at the soft emerald green fabric, and holds the gown up for his inspection.

 

“Fleuréline weave,” she says. “Very fine.”

 

For a long, terrible minute, during which Rey cannot breathe, the pilot peers at the dress, then up at her. Then the dress, then her again. Back and forth.

 

She clocks it, the moment it appears there in his pursed lips, in his squinting lilac eyes: pity.

 

He looks at her with pity.

 

Rey is miserable, and drained, and hurting. She’s not above using pity to get aboard this ship. She shakes the dress at him.

 

“ _Please,_ ” she begs.

 

At last, in a considering tone, as though this is an actual negotiation, as though the dress is actually worth anywhere _near_ the cost of passage, he asks, “Real fleuréline weave?”

 

“Real, I swear.”

 

With a sigh, he snatches the dress from her hands. “You’ll sleep in the ventral cargo hold.”

 

“Thank you,” she gushes, already moving past him, up the ramp. “Thank you, so much.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Gozetta is seated on the grand cascade of stairs that flows down from the entrance of the Hanna City Spaceport with her boys, when Rey emerges out the front doors. She spies them, even from a distance; they’re facing forward, towards the marketplace, pointing out landcruisers that race by on the cobbled street. There’s a beautiful sunset off in the direction of the Silver Sea; it lights the sky up in soft tufts of tangerine and rose. A cool breeze teases the strands of Gozetta’s long tawny hair and everything shines wetly, as though a storm has just passed through minutes before.

 

Rey can hear Weir’s excited identifications of each vehicle, even from the entrance. She hurries down the stairs, catching snippets of their discussion along the way.

 

“Groundcar! Groundcar!”

 

“That’s right,” she hears Gozetta reply. “Very good, dearest.”

 

“Gozetta,” she wheezes, once she’s a few steps above them.

 

Gozetta jumps up and spins around to look at her, her sons following suit. “Took you long enough! We’ve been waiting here for…” but the rest of the words die on her lips, as she studies Rey’s weary, tear-stained face.

 

“Rey?” The question is a soft, confused warble.

 

Without replying, Rey grabs her, and pulls her into a tight embrace. She buries her face in her sister’s jacket-clad shoulder. The tears dampen it in seconds. Her sister’s hands land lightly on her back. And then her grip grows firmer, until she is clutching Rey as tightly.

 

At length, she feels Little Poe and Weir each grab hold of a leg. “Auntie Rey!” they cry, in almost-unison. “What’d you bring us?”

 

That breaks through the misery. She chuckles, a wet snuffling noise, and raises her head to meet Gozetta’s concerned gaze.

 

“I need to get in touch with… with Ben,” she tells her, in a much steadier voice. “Immediately.”

 

Gozetta frowns. “Captain Solo?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Her sister sucks in a clipped breath, then nods, solemn, as if she’s heard rumors, as if she already knows exactly what’s going on. “We’ll talk to Poe, a-and Brixie too—we’ll get a hold of him. You mustn’t let your spirits get so low, Rey. All _will_ be well.”

 

“Yes,” is Rey’s reply, her jaw clenched so tight she can barely get the words out. “I hope you’re right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have stuck with me this far, _thank you_. I know this has been a monster of a fic, and a very emotional one at that. We're almost there. Coming up is The Letter™. I'm gonna give the _Persuasion_ -heads everything they've ever wanted [hopefully]. I've already started writing it. I'll update as soon as I can, promise.
> 
> In the meantime, some notes?
> 
> Where is: [Westport](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Westport), the [Salinrerian Sea](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Salinrerian_Sea), and Coruscant's [Industrial District](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Industrial_District_\(Coruscant\))?
> 
> Reference I used for what an [ecumenopolis](https://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/22/21018/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_Rebellio_2014-07-23_07-28-56-29.png) looks like at a distance.
> 
> Who is [Padmé Amidala](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Padm%C3%A9_Amidala)? Who are the [Quarren](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Quarren/Legends)?
> 
> Critters: [giant squid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid), [plankton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankton), [electric eel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_eel), [wander-kelp](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wander-kelp).
> 
> Want to learn some [Mon Calamarian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mon_Calamarian)? Also, because I hate making up my own names, here is a [Mon Calamarian name generator](https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/sw-mon-calamari-names.php).
> 
> What's a [Sith lord](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sith_Lord)?
> 
> Droids: our old pal [C-3PO](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/C-3PO), [IMP-22](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/IMP-22), and a [security droid](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Security_droid/Legends).
> 
> Transports! [Rulaarian pleasure yacht](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rulaarian_pleasure_yacht), [landcruiser](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Landcruiser), [groundcar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Groundcar), [cityspeeder](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cityspeeder), and the [_Inflictor_](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Inflictor).
> 
> What's [neoclassical music](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Neoclassical_music) sound like?
> 
> Materials: [Coruscanthium](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coruscanthium), [Laroon wood](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Laroon_wood), [Haysian smelt](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Haysian_smelt), [Ithorian marble](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ithorian_marble), [velmstone](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Velmstone), [flimsiplast](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Flimsiplast), and [permacrete](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Permacrete).
> 
> If you had to choose: [Toniray](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Toniray), [blossom wine](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Blossom_wine), or [green champagne](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Green_champagne)?
> 
> Let's talk Ben's ballet fashion. What's a [vambrace](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Vambrace)? Some excellent cape inspo [here](https://twitter.com/selunchen/status/1129106882558341120) and [here](https://twitter.com/ClaraGemm/status/1126143069185822720)!
> 
> What's a [Lekku](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lekku)?
> 
> Last thing: you may have noticed that the plot of Squid Lake is… somewhat familiar. That is because I took it directly from [Swan Lake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_Lake), and changed the names to make it more… uh, Mon Calamarian. Because I did not feel like thinking up my own plot, yes, but also, maybe, because I am laughing at myself and my changing the names of things to make _Persuasion_ more… Star Wars-y. Or to make _Star Wars_ more _Persuasion_ -y.
> 
> Mostly though, I did it 'cause it delighted me to no end. 😏
> 
> So that's all from me. Thank you, again, for reading. 💓


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement. There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, always and forever, to Mixy and to Trixie, who have the best ideas and wade through these monster chapters, fixing them, and always giggle it up in the Google doc with me. They are both queens.
> 
> So I did a thing, and now you can listen to an [All Our Days](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HvuuLatLmg8ZGUXJrcgCN) playlist, should you so desire!
> 
> Okay. Everybody hold onto your butts, 'cause it's time for The Letter™.

**42 ABY.**

 

 

Rey wiggles her toes in the sand as she watches her nephews play in the low tide surf, their giggling shrieks a panacea to her woes. The weak morning sun shines down upon her back, warming her slightly; the mug of steaming manellan jasper tea in her hand does the same within.

 

It could almost be considered pleasant, if not for her circumstances.

 

“Oh no, you’ve gone _moody_ again,” observes Gozetta, from her prostrate position on the blanket beside Rey.

 

“You’re one to talk,” she teases back.

 

“Takes a moody overthinker to know one.”

 

She holds her mug out towards Gozetta. “Cheers to that.”

 

Gozetta’s rises to meet hers, and they touch with a light ceramic ‘clink’. Rey takes another sip. Gozetta brews her tea far too weak for Rey’s liking, but the caffeine and warmth are still welcome. The weather has taken a turn for spring, but it’s not quite temperate yet, especially on the water. She curls her bantha wool sweater over her fingers and scoots along the blanket until she’s nearly on top of her sister.

 

“That’s better,” she sighs.

 

“Poor desert rat.”

 

Once Gozetta had called her that— or something like it— and she’d been hurt. It had felt like vituperation back then. But now Gozetta’s mouth lifts up at the edges as she speaks; her green eyes shine with humor as they flick up to Rey before returning to the homework assignment on her datapad, and Rey discovers… the words don’t sting like they once did.

 

Sisterly teasing.

 

Another panacea.

 

“You’re thinking about _him_ , then?”

 

“I suppose,” she murmurs. “The first time I laid eyes on him here—remember that day you caught a cold, and I went to fetch you some tea? I saw him in an alley in Old Hannatown Market. After, I walked down to the beach and jumped in the ocean.”

 

“What?” cries Gozetta. “But it was freezing that day! And… _rainy!_ ”

 

Rey nods. “I needed that, I think.”

 

“Oh, stars, you’re worse off than I’d realized.”

 

Again, Rey nods. Gozetta has put the datapad down; for a beat, they simply stare at each other.

 

“It’s only been two days,” she says at last. “We shall stave off our throwing you to the sea for at least a week.”

 

Rey ekes out a pained chuckle, though the perpetual ache in her throat makes the act difficult. It’s been two days for Gozetta, because that’s how long ago she arrived on Chandrila; for _her_ , it’s been over a week.

 

Time. Dragging, torturous, prickly time. Filled with total comms silence and the prospect of his rejection, should the same fate befall them as did eight years ago. Should he never come back.

 

Things have not been going well, it could be said.

 

And sordid news travels along the intergalactic grapevine about as fast as one might expect; as Rey had suspected upon reuniting with her sister, Gozetta already knew all about her night at the ballet. Poe— who’d heard from Finn, who’d spoken directly to Ben— had informed Gozetta that Armitage had informed _Ben_ that they were engaged. All of these conversations had occurred before Rey had even stepped foot on Chandrila.

 

She wishes Armitage were here on this beach with her so could bust up his other lip. And his nose too.

 

That _snake_.

 

What hurts the most, she’s decided upon much reflection, is that Ben believed it.

 

That after everything, he gave up on her without question. It rankles because it’s so similar to what she did to him eight years ago, and she thought they were past all that. Here on the other side of the mistreatment, Rey can understand his resentment, his wounded pride, his lingering wariness towards her, back when they were first reunited months ago.

 

The sting of rejection does not fade quickly.

 

_Was I really so opaque in my desire? Didn’t he know, from the dreams? Couldn’t he see it in my actions, in my face?_

 

They’d almost _kissed_ , for edge’s sake. Right there in the lobby.

 

Finn had, by his own telling, rushed to assure Ben that it couldn’t possibly be true, that he and Rey had discussed Ben before, that he was certain she still had feelings for him… but it hadn’t made a difference. Her asking him to find Ben during her journey to Coruscant, their talks about regret— none of it had swayed Ben’s mind.

 

_“I’m going to make this easy for both of us.”_

 

Those were the words Finn had used when she’d spoke to him, a verbatim quote from Ben.

 

_Easy._

 

She could laugh, if the urge to scream weren’t stronger. If her anger didn’t have her by the throat. What nonsense. What about any of this has been easy? Where is the ease in love, or its passing? Rey wants to know when the easy part begins. She’d like to be there already.

 

And now he is gone. Again.

 

The Force has returned the dreams to her since she left Coruscant, but they feel like a mockery of her pain. At night she is taken to the uneti tree, its boughs heavy with green leaves and soft pink blossoms. She roams far and wide under the rose-gold half light, looking for him.

 

 _Ben_ , she calls. _Ben, where are you?_

 

And each night it is the same; she circles the tree what feels like a hundred times, and wanders into the forest, and passes down all the lanes of the orchard, then returns to the tree, all the while calling his name. On one of those passes, suddenly, he is there, seated with his back against the trunk. She has stumbled over him every time.

 

 _Ben, come back,_ she pleads, as she kneels by his side. _Please._

 

But his eyes are shut and he does not reply, does not move a muscle, does not even breathe. He is a simulacrum, now moreso than ever. A true shade, inanimate and blank.

 

 _Come back to me_.

 

Then she wakes with wet cheeks and bedding nearly torn apart from her somnolent thrashing.

 

A week and two nights, she has endured this terrible dream. How much longer? There were dark shadows under her eyes when she looked in the mirror this morning.

 

There is no resolution to the question anyway; she is torn from her wearied musings when out of nowhere, a pair of hands wrap around her face, covering her eyes. They smell faintly of ship lubricant, of honey, and of fathier.

 

“Guess who?” says a woman’s voice, sing-song and chipper. Rey knows that voice. Her spirits lift at the sound of that voice.

 

Chuckling, she muses, “Hmmm… Mara Jade?”

 

“Eehnt,” the voice drones, emulating a buzzer.

 

“Master Skywalker.”

 

“Eeeeeeehnt! One more try.”

 

“You’ve given it away,” she laughs. “Hello, Brixie.”

 

“Kriff! Well anyway, ding ding ding!” The hands fall from her face, and she turns to see Brixie bent in half, smiling down at her.

 

“Hey there, you,” says Rose, circumventing Brixie to gingerly wrap her arms around Rey. “I’m so happy to see you safe and sound and not on that hell planet anymore.”

 

Rose’s grip is so light she’s barely touching her, and that strikes Rey as odd; it feels as though she’s a glass statue, one which Rose is trying desperately not to shatter.

 

“Thanks,” she sighs, “I’m happy not to be there.” Then she pops up to accept an equally cautious embrace from Brixie. “And I had no idea you two were coming to Chandrila!”

 

“I ma-a-ay have told Goz not to tell you—I love a good surprise!” exclaims Brixie. “I wanted to come get my hive, I think they’ll do well on the island. And… we have another, bigger surprise for you guys.”

 

Instead of continuing, she turns to Gozetta, who squints up at her, still seated on the blanket.

 

“Hello, sourpuss,” she teases.

 

Gozetta adopts a pout. “Don’t call me that.” Despite her indignance, she returns the hug when Brixie leans over and offers it.

 

“Oh, hell,” says Rose, when Gozetta’s eyes slide over to her. “Get in here, you—you’re gonna basically be my sister-in-law-ish soon enough.” With that, she bends at the waist to give Gozetta a squeeze.

 

A beat later, the words sink in and Rey frowns, sputtering: “Wait, what?”

 

In tandem, Rose and Brixie lift up their right hands for inspection. On their ring fingers sit matching bands.

 

“Ribbons of petrified wood and meteorite set in songsteel,” boasts Brixie. “Rosie made them herself.”

 

That is enough to finally induce Gozetta to rise from the blanket. “Oh, a _wedding_!” she squeals. “You _must_ throw a celebration, a big one, for your engagement. Here on Chandrila! Don’t make me travel to Batuu again—I didn’t care for the journey at _all_.”

 

Rose and Brixie share a look, then smile noncommittally.

 

“How lovely,” Rey murmurs, reaching for Rose’s hand and turning her fingers this way and that, admiring how the materials catch the morning sunlight. Rose is beaming, Brixie is beaming, even Rey feels temporarily transported from her gloom. “Congratulations.”

 

“Thanks,” Rose says. “Brixie was the one to propose, so I made the rings, seeing as she’s not a metalworker…”

 

“Yet.” Brixie smirks at Rose.

 

Rose wraps an arm around her fiancée’s waist. “Yet.”

 

“Anyway, even if I don’t know metalwork I _do_ know engineering, so I can figure it out,” Brixie continues, resting her head atop Rose’s. “I’m gonna do the wedding bands. But they’ll probably just be simply durasteel or something.”

 

Rey nods. “They’ll be wonderful.”

The two of them are so clearly overjoyed, and the moment is a merry one, but Rey notices there’s a hint of something in the way Rose looks at her; it takes her a moment of standing there, letting the conversation flow on without her, before she puts her finger on it.

 

Wariness. There is wariness in Rose’s hesitant gaze, her furrowed brows.

 

It stings to see that, until it comes to her: what Finn has told Poe and Gozetta, he has no doubt told Brixie and Rose as well. The mortification of that, of people thinking she is engaged to Armitage Hux, is nearly enough to send Rey diving into the waves.

 

“What of the beasts?” Gozetta is asking, just as she snaps back to attention.

 

“A couple of old friends from the _Correllian Hound_ are minding the ranch while we’re gone,” Rose replies. “And they have James. They’ll be in good hands.”

 

Gozetta purses her lips, nodding. “And when’s the wedding? I’ll need time to find a dress, you know. You musn’t just spring this on people.”

 

“Dunno,” laughs Rose, with a shrug. “We want a long engagement. There’s no rush when we have the rest of our lives, y’know?”

 

“And I want a big beautiful ceremony,” Brixie adds. “With half the New Republic there. I’m gonna be the second-prettiest bride that ever was.”

 

“Oh, you.” Rose giggles in a way that seems both abashed and delighted.

 

“Yes, well, just… make sure we have time to prepare,” Gozetta warns them fretfully. “Other people want to look good too!”

 

“I’m starving,” Brixie sends back, after exchanging a quick look with Rose— which does not go missed by Rey— “Goz, could you scrounge up some snacks for us?”

 

“What am I, your servant?”

 

“ _Gozetta_.” Rose’s tone is dead-serious now, her eyes narrowed as she stares at Gozetta pointedly. “Please? Some food?”

 

“I… oh. Well, yes.”

 

It’s unusual, very unusual, how Gozetta complies like that. Rey puzzles over it as her sister abruptly turns and marches off. Brixie and Rose take a seat on the blanket and she follows suit, then checks the surf. Weir and Little Poe remain happily playing, mid-construction on the biggest castle she’s ever seen them build. She chews the inside of her cheek, darting a look towards the bungalow.

 

“The only thing about this that’s bittersweet,” says Brixie, sobered, after a few minutes, “is that I always imagined Terena would be part of my wedding, when I was a little girl.”

 

Rose nods. “Same with Paige, and my parents.”

 

“Their spirits will be there in the Force, watching over you.” Rey offers them both a sad smile, and reaches over to wrap her arm around Brixie’s shoulders.

 

“Yeah,” Brixie huffs. “Thanks, I like that idea.”

 

Another quiet moment passes; it is Rose who chimes up next.

 

“As nice as this is, we need to talk.” Rey glances over. Rose’s head is tilted, and the look she’s giving Rey is frank. Direct. Perceptive. “We wanted to ask you in person.”

 

“Yes, right,” she says, wincing.

 

Brixie nudges her. “We’ve been hearing some wild rumors.”

 

She winces again. _That insufferable git._

 

“They’re not true,” Rey mutters.

 

“They’re _not_?” cries Brixie. “So you _swear_ you’re not engaged to Armitage Hux?”

 

“No, never. Never ever.”

 

“Oh, thank the Maker!”

 

Rose looks just as relieved as her fiancée. “You seriously dodged a blaster bolt, Rey. We’d pretty much planned to have an intervention with you anyway, and then when I saw the news this morning… well, I was even _more_ worried.”

 

“What…” she sucks in a deep breath, shaking her head. “What—what is it?”

 

As she asks, dread prickles the back of her mind; there should be surprise, shouldn’t there? Yet there isn’t. She’s always known there was something not quite right about Armitage, hasn’t she? Hasn’t he always filled her with vague unease?

 

Rose picks up Gozetta’s datapad and taps the screen a few times, then hands it over. “Take a look for yourself.” She’s pulled up a HoloNet news article, the headline of which Rey reads aloud:

 

_“Head of Jinata Security Missing, Wanted for Questioning by Authorities.”_

 

There it is. All his talk of power, of control, of what he could do for Rey— she _knew_ it was not to be trusted. At least, some instinctual part of her did.

 

“Isn’t _that_ something,” remarks Gozetta, dry as a bone, as she approaches the blanket with an armful of snacks and a bottle of koyo wine hanging from one hand. She appears utterly unruffled by the revelation.

 

Rey grabs a koyo from the heap her sister drops in her lap, then passes the rest onto Rose and Brixie. “You saw this?”

 

“I… may have,” she replies reluctantly. “It seemed a sensitive topic, I trusted Rose and Brixie would know best how to break it to you. And in any case, you already know my feelings on the matter—Armitage Hux has won no favor from me. _Terribly_ rude man.” With that, she plucks two koyo fruits from the pile and wanders down to the water’s edge, where Little Poe is launching a full offensive on the gargantuan sand castle Weir has claimed as his own.

 

Rey watches her go, torn between amusement and frustration, as she always is with Gozetta.

 

Rose lets out a sigh. “I heard from a friend—Maz Kanata, know her? Old pirate queen who runs the Tashtor sector—that Hux is _actually_ a spy for a contingent of the First Order that fled when the war turned in the New Republic’s favor, and that he has a secret partner and benefactor who’s been hiding out in the Unknown Regions this whole time.” At the sight of Rey’s gaping jaw, she hastens to add, “But it’s all very hearsay right now!”

 

A spy. Is it possible? Rey searches her feelings, and decides: it’s not _im_ possible.

 

“So, was… the First Order not defeated?” Gozetta asks, returned from the battle of the sand castle. She flops down onto a corner of the blanket, and stares up at them in puzzlement.

 

Rose shakes her head. “Not completely, to hear Maz tell it.”

 

Returning to the article, Rey paraphrases: “He’s wanted for questioning as a result of a secret investigation spearheaded by Senator Organa-Solo, who released a public statement today announcing that the Senate is issuing warrants for the arrests of Rinnrivin Di, officers of his cartel, several members of the Amaxine warriors, and a few former high-ranking officials in the dismantled Corporate Sector Authority.” She shrugs at her sister. “The charges include conspiracy to commit treason, actual _treason_ , unlawful armament, credit laundering, and attempted bribery of planetary and sector officials.”

 

“It’s bad.” Brixie’s face is pinched in a grimace. “Now you can understand why we were so worried about you two being together. I mean, besides the fact that Ben Solo is clearly in love with you, and you with him.”

 

Rey blushes, unsure what to say, but a seething Gozetta takes the onus off her:

 

“Where _is_ he, anyway? I swear, Captain Benjamin Solo’s favorite pastime is going missing—he’s absent more often than he’s not! And what of my sister? This is a _fine_ way of showing her he cares!”

 

“He thought I was engaged to another man, Goz.” Rey’s voice is no more than a sigh, a subdued gasp, drained of anger. “And not just any other man—a possible enemy of the state. I wonder if he knew.”

 

“Probably just the rumors, right? Leia always plays things so close to her chest.” Brixie looks as anguished as Rey feels.

 

“He should’ve asked you,” Gozetta insists.

 

Rey bows her head in agreement. “Yes. Yes, he should have.”

 

A weighty silence takes hold among the four women; Brixie munches aggressively on a handful of brestel nuts, Rose stares off at the sea, and Rey reads and re-reads the article on the datapad, trying to parse truth from lie in her recollection of all the conversations she’s held with Armitage. Gozetta watches over her sons for a while, then abruptly begins shrieking at them. She jumps to her feet and races off towards the water; Weir, toppled by his big brother, has fallen back into the shallow waves.

 

“Is he alright, Goz?” Rey shouts after her.

 

A moment later, her sister’s disgruntled reply comes back. “Ugh, just wet!”

 

“Was there ever _anything_ —you and Hux…” Rose stumbles over the question, then appears to give up.

 

“No.” Rey shakes her head. “I could never… never quite feel comfortable around him. It’s hard to explain. And then, at the ballet—”

 

“What _happened_?” Brixie now, the question bursting out of her; she slaps her hand over her mouth and titters nervously. She amends: “That is… if you want to talk about it?”

 

“He… Ben just… he left…” she swallows past the lump in her throat, and stares down at the blanket. “It makes sense now, knowing what Armitage told him. But…”

 

Brixie scoffs. “It’s like Goz said—he shoulda _asked_.” That air of pensiveness lingers, though, and a moment later, she adds, “He’ll come around. You two can sort this out.”

 

“You seem so certain,” Rey says, forlorn.

 

“He’s a good one. Remember that holocall from him after my fall? He was very gracious, all things considered. Apologized for ‘leading me on’,” she shakes her head, bemused, another rogue giggle escaping, “Poor guy was so awkward and remorseful. I’m not sure if he ever realized Rose and I had started, uh, chatting by that point—to hear _him_ talk, he thought I considered him and me as good as engaged! I did like him, I’ll admit, but… what a mess. A good-intentioned mess.”

 

“A good-intentioned mess,” echoes Rey mutedly. Fatigued from the onslaught of memories and emotion, she lays her head down atop of her knees.

 

“Kinda feel like that describes all of us, to be honest,” Rose remarks.

 

“Yes,” Rey says, “all except Armitage.”

 

“Oh yeah, he’s dead to us.” Brixie bobs her head earnestly in agreement.

 

Only catching the last snippet as she returns again to the blanket, Gozetta asks, “Who’s dead to us?”

 

Rey shakes her head, letting her eyes slip closed. “No one, Goz. Let’s talk of something else.”

 

“Want to see holos of the baby fathiers? They’re already getting so big!”

 

“I shouldn’t care a whit but let me fetch the boys—they’ll love them, I’m sure. Probably be pestering me for _weeks_ to get one of our own.”

 

So the morning goes on.

 

 

. . .

 

 

As days roll by, the temperature steadily rises, the whole world thawing from the weeks of cold, icy rain. The winter has passed. Tender green shoots begin to emerge from the ground, and the Damerons are already hard at work preparing for the sowing of a new field of koyo trees.

 

But not _so_ hard at work that they don’t go along with Gozetta’s idea to prepare a feast and light a bonfire in honor of their daughter’s engagement. So the date is set for a celebration, and everyone who has ever been acquainted with the Damerons and the Ticos— what remains of them, which amounts to Rose and a few distant relations— are invited to the Great House to fête the young women’s joining.

 

Rey wants her happiness for them to be pure and untroubled. It is not. She wakes at dawn each morning, sweat-drenched and torn up from the same awful nightmare. Unable to sleep a minute more, she walks the beach, hunting for perfect seashells, determined to fashion them into some kind of proper engagement gift. The rest of the day is spent helping the Damerons prepare, or tending to her nephews, or assisting her sister with something or other.

 

At night, she feigns exhaustion— not difficult, as she _is_ worn out from the long days— and meditates alone in her room, searching for him. Seeking answers.

 

She finds only herself, and her own strength, and her connection to the Force. That has to suffice.

 

“Maybe he’ll attend the celebration,” Gozetta tries to reassure her, the evening before, after she’s been gazing out the window at the dark rolling sea for hours, lost in a daydream or a memory or some amalgamation of the two.

 

“Rey? Are you listening?”

 

“Hm?” She turns from the window.

 

“He might come to the Damerons’ celebration. Finn sent a hologram to Senator Organa-Solo.”

 

There is an instant of fluttering in her stomach at that, a great leap of her heart in her chest. And then it hollows out, leaving only a void behind.

 

Hope. Agony.

 

“Oh,” she says, and nothing more.

 

They don’t speak of it again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“So you’re alive after all.”

 

This is his mother’s wry greeting when Ben walks through the front door of her Hanna City apartment two weeks after fleeing the Galaxies Opera House and shortly thereafter, Coruscant. Her head is turned so she can peer at him over the back of the living room pouf couch, and he is glad to see neither the anger nor disappointment he was expecting in her expression.

 

Just relief.

 

“Yeah,” he husks out.

 

“The caf is fresh.” She tips her mug in the direction of the kitchen counter. Ben pours himself a cup, then passes through the apartment and collapses onto the cushions next to her.

 

She looks arrestingly frail in her pajamas and bathrobe, a long chocolate-slate braid draped over one shoulder. Smaller than he remembers. Searching his memory, it occurs to him that he can’t remember the last time he saw her in anything other than formalwear or her senatorial robes.

 

“Ready to tell me what’s going on?” she asks, interrupting his reverie.

 

“First tell me what’s happening with Rinnrivin.”

 

“You don’t need to worry about Rinnrivin anymore. He’s gotten too big for his britches, overplayed his hand, and we’ve got him right where we want. The long arm of the law is coming for him. So, spill.”

 

“She’s engaged.” He lets his head sink into the cushioned couch back, then rolls it to meets his mother’s eyes; they’re dark, just as his are, and he can see the reflection of his drawn, pale face in them. “…To Armitage Hux.”

 

“Bantha shit.”

 

“Why?” he volleys. “Consider her family—it makes sense.”

 

“Her family? You mean the terrible people I’ve never once heard a good word about?” She scoffs at him. “The ones who dragged her to Bastatha in the first place?”

 

He sniffs, then grimaces. He stinks; he’s been flying the _Falcon_ for nearly two standard weeks with barely any rest. Taking detours along the way back from Coruscant, stopping off at odd shadowports he and his father used to haunt. Not buying anything, not talking to anyone, just wandering. Agonizing over what to do next, wondering how he will manage to convince himself this time that he’s not in love with her.

 

Hopeless.

 

So he shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. She’s loyal.”

 

“You bet she is—I saw the way she looked at you. Kiddo, the girl is still in love with you.”

 

There’s no arguing with his mother when she adapts that resolute tone, so he gives a scoff of his own, then counters tonelessly, “Regardless. She’s engaged to Armitage Hux.”

 

And maybe that’s what is right for her, he’s decided. If that’s what she wants, _really_ wants, then he’ll leave her to it. Only…

 

He thinks of what the senator of Arkanis had to say about the troubled early years of Mister Armitage Hux; about his violent, authoritarian streak, about how the late Brendol fostered Hux’s crueler tendencies during boyhood and adolescence before dying mysteriously. About the rumors of Hux’s inheritance of Jinata Security being part of some grand design, about whispers of the backroom deals he’s been making.

 

(His conscience has been screaming an endless litany at him, since _that_ night. Is she privy to all these rumors? If not, she deserves to be; she should understand the kind of man she’s marrying.)

 

Not feeling particularly inclined to elaborate, he sinks lower into the couch and takes a drink of his caf, then recoils. He forgot to add sugar.

 

Leia sighs. Then, like she’s reached in and plucked the thought from his mind: “In that case, you owe it to her to tell her about Hux. The man’s no good, Ben.”

 

“So the rumors are true?” he asks, and seeing her nod, he ventures, “Is the senator from Arkanis going to testify?”

 

“Oh yes. In addition to at least three other credible sources, all willing to give accounts of his unscrupulous business dealings. I was really on the fence about him for a while there, but…” she shakes her head, “His hands are far from clean in all this. I wouldn’t be surprised if once we get a hold of his assets, we find that he’s linked to _all_ of them.”

 

He never should have let Hux get under his skin like that at the ballet, he should have insisted on speaking with Rey directly, he should have ignored that growling voice that drowned him in doubts. How he regrets leaving like he did; just thinking about it makes his chest ache. _Weak._ Suddenly the prismatic, oily sheen that’s spread over the surface of his caf is fascinating. He stares at it in silence.

 

“This defeatist streak, you must get that from your father. No Organa or Skywalker or Naberrie would just… run away like that.”

 

With a sigh, he rises and returns to the kitchen to remedy his mistake; more sugar than is probably reasonable is dumped into the mug.

 

“I’m not a defeatist,” he says, after a few swallows. It’s sweet now. Sweeter than sweet, just how he likes it.

 

“So, that party tonight? The one Finn told me about?” Her pursed lips and droll tone scream ‘judgmental’ to him, and there is some part of his brain that itches to walk out the door. But he doesn’t; he’s too exhausted. “Will you go see her?”

 

He shakes his head as he shuffles back to the couch and slumps down onto it again. “That’s not—”

 

“Oh, go on, tell me again about her supposed engagement,” she interjects. “You _know_ how I much I enjoy having my point proven for me!”

 

He grits his teeth. “Leia.”

 

“Benjamin.”

 

“Mother.”

 

“Ben. I’ve tried to stay out of this, I’ve tried to make _everyone_ stay out of this. I know how you feel about your privacy. But… just _go_. You’ve been a tremendous help to me. You fought a war for me, you helped root out your republic’s enemies for me. Your father would be _proud_. You’ve done enough.”

 

“That’s not what this is about,” he protests.

 

But Leia shakes her head, as if she too has grown weary. As if she’s been with him for the past two weeks, in some cosmic sense, watching over his self-flagellation and aimlessness with a mother’s apprehension.

 

“Do something for _you_ , kiddo. Han would’ve wanted that. I want that. And by the blood of Alderaan, do not even breathe the word ‘deserve’ to me.” Her tone is devoid of any trace of her usual dry humor. “ _Don’t_ you do it.”

 

“I’m tired,” he confesses, the words raw.

 

“Oh, for edge’s sake, then go there for _her_!” she growls. “I’ve never seen a woman look so heartbroken as she did after you left.”

 

More regret; he scowls down at his caf, ashamed of himself. But a word in that rebuke registers with him, albeit belatedly. _Heartbroken?_ He looks askance at his mother, and finds that one of her slate eyebrows is arched knowingly.

 

“Like someone kicked her pet ferbil,” she confirms.

 

“I don’t know if I can.”

 

Leia rolls her eyes, but she also leans over and throws an arm around his shoulders. Ben lets it happen, lets himself lean into the embrace. It’s not the kind of thing that has happened frequently, not since he passed a certain age, especially not after he joined his father’s crew.

 

It’s nice, in that foreign way of childhood comforts long since left behind.

 

“Of course you can,” she tells him. “You get on the ship, you… you turn it on,” here she waves her hand, dismissing the specifics, “Then you fly a handful of kilometers over to the Dameron property. You see her, you say hello. You apologize. Don’t give me that look, you should. You ask if it’s true about Hux—Finn says it isn’t, by the way, and if I were a betting woman I’d put all my money on him being right—and then you talk it out like an adult. Which you are now, in case you’ve forgotten.”

 

He glares up at her. “I know.”

 

“Then _act_ like you know!”

 

He sighs.

 

A long series of minutes pass, in which he can only hear his own pounding heart and the antique wooden chrono he gifted to Leia upon his return to Chandrila. Leia says nothing; she merely sips at her caf while she waits for him to mull over her advice.

 

“Fine,” he says, at length. “I’ll go.”

 

“And talk to her?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And a _pol_ ogize?”

 

“Yes, damn it!” he snaps.

 

She pats his lank hair approvingly. “That’s my boy.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

He spends a long time in the shower, long enough that the water runs cold.

 

With only a thick towel wrapped around his waist, he seats himself on the foot of the sleeper in his mother’s guest bedroom. From there he can stare at his reflection in the full-length mirror across the room. The morning sunshine is bright and harsh and reveals every wrinkle around his eyes, the greys that fleck his patchy stubble and wet hair, all the features he’d so despised in his youth— ears like the wings of a tie fighter, a beak of a nose, and around all of it, a spattering of ugly moles— all highlighted, all exposed.

 

Tired. He looks tired and old and defeated. Which is in accordance with how he feels.

 

 _I’ve never seen a woman look so heartbroken,_ his mother had said.

 

Could she love this face? It’s always been his worst feature, in his own opinion. His body is in good shape, he’s seen to that. He may be nearing forty, but his muscles are firm, his torso solid, his legs, flanks and back all free of the flab that often begins to plague men his age.

 

 _It’s not great,_ he thinks, _but I’ve seen worse._

 

Although: how much of it was ever about looks? What he and Rey had back on Jakku, it was deeper than that. He was drawn to her, as she was to him. It was love. He knows it was love.

 

To think that he’d ever gotten over it is a farce, he sees that clearly now. How did he even convince himself of that?

 

He knows. Years of flying endless missions back-to-back until exhaustion forced him out of the sky, of melee combat and felled friends and battles won and battles lost and funerals and long nights of drinking songs with his fellow pilots, mourning those they’d lost and the things they’d lost in themselves, all of it, all the decisions, all the eyes on him, each soul entrusted to his care asking him in breathless terror: _What now? What do we do, Captain Solo?_

 

That. That was enough to distract himself, enough to lock that love away.

 

Not that it mattered, not that it worked. The moment he saw her, spoke with her— the compassion she showed Shara Bey that first night, and the gentle way she admonished that air-headed sister of hers, her complete lack of pretension, her competence, the dreams, and yes, okay, fine, her beauty, of _course_ her beauty— he was hers again. It took until Batuu to admit it to himself, but he was lost to her long before that.

 

He reaches up to prod at the old wound across his face, made by a contained energy axe during the Battle of Takodana. It’s healed well, mostly, but there will always be a faint red cicatrix marring his cheek.

 

Would that his heart had healed so well.

 

 _Heartbroken_. The word echoes inside his mind, at an inescapable resonance. He’d felt the same, as he flung himself back into the _Falcon_ and rushed to get the hell off of Coruscant. Oh, Hux had been ready for him, prepared with cruel truths dressed as insults, and he had felt his will collapse under the weight of them. Felt his heart break.

 

Could he have been wrong, though? Maybe. Of course, Hux _might_ have lied to him; that’s occurred to him more than once on his rambling journey. But he’d mentioned Han, and Ben had lost his footing, lost his assurance. And that voice had been there in his mind, ready to stoke the flames of his fear.

 

 _If you just ask her, you nerfherder, you could get your answer, and settle this thing._ If he goes to the celebration for Tico and Brixie… awkward on top of awkward. And it bows him over, the fact that they’re engaged; they only met a few months ago. How does this all come so _easily_ to some people? Why couldn’t he have had that? He’s taken to assuming this is just what he deserves, though nothing gets his mother angrier faster than when he voices that assumption. But it does irk him, slightly.

 

Between one heavy sigh and the next, while Ben is scrutinizing his reflection in the mirror, it snaps out of existence.

 

Just like that.

 

He blinks in stunned shock. The bedroom is already quiet, its lone window soundproofed against the busy skylanes outside, but suddenly even the slightest hint of ambient noise is gone; all he can hear is his own lungs filling with air, his own heart pumping blood.

 

Where mere seconds ago there was a mirror, and a wall, and a closet tucked discreetly behind a hidden door, now there is… a beach. Or so he thinks. It’s very bright, wherever it is, with that kind of glare that comes from the midday sun bouncing off of sand and water. In the background, there’s a roiling motion to the dark blue blur that suggests waves. And in the foreground…

 

Rey.

 

She’s seated facing away from him. On the sand, maybe? He suspects she’s looking out at the Silver Sea. Only a few meters away from where Ben sits gawking, at this very moment, and also, outside the city limits. How strangely the Force moves within the galaxy, how chaotic and fortuitous it can be.

 

So there he sits, wordlessly watching her watch the tide. He wants to open his mouth, he wants to say the right words.

 

They don’t come.

 

If he’s going to see her in person tonight, he damned well better think of something.

 

Rey turns her head, and he can see now that she’s squinting from the glare. She looks tired. As tired as he feels. Would that they could forget all that’s passed, and lie down together, and sleep in each other’s arms for a good long while.

 

“I’m sorry,” is all he gets out, a strangled whisper.

 

She doesn’t seem to hear it. Before he can say anything else, she is gone.

 

And if before Ben had been entertaining second thoughts, now he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt… he is _going_ to that party.

 

 

. . .

 

 

So after a few hours’ of much-needed sleep— something he has barely allowed himself since he left Coruscant, because when he has, he has found himself alone under the uneti tree, searching for her, only to spot her sitting off in the distance at the edge of the forest, a place which seems to move farther away, forever unreachable, as he runs to her— he takes the _Falcon_ and sets out.

 

Rising above the city then swinging out in a wide loop over the sea, he watches as the sun dips down to the horizon, casting a shimmering golden trail along the water, bathing the foaming waves in shades of lilac and tangerine. This flightpath, he figures, permits him to land on the beach, hidden from view of the Great House by the forest that borders Kes and Shara’s property.

 

It affords him a few more minutes to corral his thoughts before seeing Rey.

 

Engaged.

 

Or maybe not.

 

He hadn’t felt a ring when he’d held her hand nor had he seen one, but then, not all planets and cultures ascribe to the practice. Ben wonders, not for the first time, as to Hux’s origins. Is he originally from Arkanis? Was his father? Do they wear wedding rings, wherever he’s from?

 

_Why didn’t you just ask her? Why didn’t you stay?_

 

The same questions he’s already pondered a hundred times, maybe more. And the same answer, so familiar it makes him sick: _fear._

 

He makes landfall on the beach, not far from the tiny bungalow Rey’s sister shares with Dameron. For a long time, he remains seated in the pilot’s seat, as night leeches all the fiery color and drama from the sky, until it is the bluest grey or the greyest blue he’s ever seen. Then stars begin to wink into existence, and he knows he has put this off long enough.

 

But he’s distracted on his path towards the treeline by a glimpse of light in one of the bungalow’s windows.

 

Could she have abstained from Tico and Brixie’s celebration?

 

That doesn’t seem like her, but then, neither does marrying Armitage _kriffing_ Hux. The more he thinks about it—thinks about what his mother has told him, what Finn has told him, what he himself damn well knows about Rey’s character—the more preposterous it seems.

 

Has he been a fool? Has he given up too quickly on her, _again_?

 

( _Yes. Of course you have_ , screams his ever-louder conscience.)

 

Clumsily, he crosses the sand and dunes, towards Dameron’s home. A few of the droids idling within perk up when he steps through the unlocked front door, but they seem to remember him from visits past, because they return to an idle state without fanfare.

 

Light shines from underneath one of the long corridor’s several closed doors. Without any sense of optimism that it will work, he steps towards it.

 

Miraculously, it opens.

 

Inside is an uninteresting bedroom. A little bare, maybe. Very plain. And empty of its inhabitant, who most likely forgot to extinguish their lamp before leaving.

 

He almost turns and goes back the way he came.

 

He almost ignores the uninteresting bedroom.

 

But right as he’s turning away, something catches his eye. Over there, on the nightstand by the window: a flash of color.

 

He spins back, re-enters the room. Strides across the warm carpeted floor. Barely able to breathe, he runs careful fingers over the delicate items on the nightstand.

 

Nightbloomers, a small bouquet of them. Faded to a dusky dark pink, looking as if one misplaced breath in their direction will reduce them to desiccated particles. Even just a brush of his fingers sends little flecks of the withered petals up into the air. And behind them, leaned against a bronze-plated lamp, the thing that twists at his gut, the thing that has him collapsing wordlessly onto the sleeper:

 

A postcard.

 

A postcard he’d thought he lost a long time ago.

 

Faded and wrinkled with well-worn lines where it has been folded and unfolded countless times.

 

Ben is trespassing. Staying in this bedroom is meddlesome at best, unethical and immoral at worst.

 

But on that postcard is a picture of Cloud City, floating among the thick white cumulonimbus tufts of Bespin. Ben remembers it, remembers when he was small and had to take two steps for every one of his father’s and they went there to see Lando and everything was so bright, so clean and white and the people all smiled and patted his hair when Han introduced him to them.

 

Lando swept him up into a hug that first visit, and every visit after, asking him how his favorite starfighter was. There was always a toy waiting for him or a new ship for him to explore. An errant thought: he wonders if Han’s old friend remembers that first trip, when he gave young Ben the postcard. Wonders what he thought of Ben back then.

 

He’ll have to give him a call soon; he’s been stuck on Bespin for months, taking care of cleaning his own house, just as Leia has.

 

Finally, after staring at it for a long time, he gathers the nerve to pluck it off the table. The front reads, _‘Wish you were here!’_ The paper is so worn it feels like cloth. Does it count as snooping if it was just sitting out in the open like this? _Of course it does,_ he chides himself. _But you’re going to do it anyway._ He turns it over. There is a sketch there, where once there was only blank white paper; faded just as the photo is, but identifiable all the same.

 

It’s him. A rendering of his face, eyes closed and expression peaceful, made long ago while he slept.

 

“Oh,” he coughs, and the tears come before he can quell them. “Oh, shit.”

 

The cumulative effect of the nightbloomers and the postcard is staggering; he drops his head in his hands.

 

Kriff, he _remembers_ that day. He’s tried so hard to forget, but he never has. How he walked the edges of that dusty old outpost, out into the desert, only the twin moons to guide him as he gathered those flowers and deliberated the conundrum of getting her to leave Jakku.

 

How full of fear he was, as he is now. This is Rey’s doing, inadvertently: she lays bare the man that he is, one who feels and desires more keenly than he’s comfortable admitting. She did it to him back then, and although he labored to protect himself from that same influence when she wandered back into his life, it’s irrefutable; this is what she has done to him again.

 

Without saying anything. Just by being who she is.

 

What is this? What is the truth here? Ben has had the opportunity, over the past few months, to speak to Rey, and to observe the way she treats others.

 

She is neither duplicitous nor manipulative.

 

So how can she be both marrying Hux and hoarding mementos of their time together by her bedside? No. There is only room enough for one truth.

 

He knows what kind of woman Rey is. The same as she ever was: loyal, and strong, and good.

 

And Ben? Who _is_ he? All his life, people have told him.

 

 _There’s that Skywalker spirit_ , they’d say.

 

_There’s that Solo recklessness._

 

_There’s that Organa intellect._

 

_There’s that Naberrie haughtiness._

 

He is all those things, and none of them. For so long, he was driven by the need to _not_ be anything like _one_ man; it defined him. And then his father died, and Rey refused him, and the need grew stronger. He has proven he isn’t, hasn’t he? That he’ll never be his grandfather? That he won’t run from the call of duty, like his father did? Can’t he simply be Ben now? Can he put down all this heritage and history and walk away, a free man?

 

Can he just be Rey’s?

 

He is tired, so tired. He has been tired for nearly a decade. Every step away from her has been along a road of weariness, a road of hardship, a road of hard-earned stoicism.

 

But Ben is no stoic. He is all feeling, and he always has been.

 

 _No more hiding, no more running away,_ he resolves. Not for either of them. He has erred more gravely this time than ever before; he will have to find the words to make this right.

 

But for now, Ben does not fight back the tears; he lets himself cry for all that he has lost, for the youth that seemed to disappear overnight, for the father who tried and failed and tried again, for the war that consumed him…

 

For what he gave up.

 

For the mistakes he keeps making.

 

For what he might still reclaim.

 

For Rey.

 

The tears roll down his cheeks, between his fingers, dripping on his thighs.

 

He lets them fall.

 

Agony.

 

Hope.

 

 

. . .

 

 

There’s no moonlight to guide his way, what with the clouds sitting low in the sky— rain is coming, he can feel it in the warm sticky air— so the path through the forest is treacherous. He nearly trips on stray roots and rocks more than once.

 

The smoky scent of bonfire drifts towards him before he can see its light. Then he begins to catch glimpses through the forest’s needle-leaf branches: great orange flames, a fire raging higher than the heads of the people standing and sitting and dancing around it, black silhouettes drifting into and out of the shadows, and music— a band, somewhere, playing something lively on a seven-string hallikset and claw harp and kasta drums— and laughter and merry-making, coming from all around.

 

He halts at the place where the forest stops, not yet stepping onto the lawn, and watches from behind a tree.

 

Everyone is barefoot, dressed in soft spring clothing. There is wine, and a long table laden with picked-over dishes.

 

And there, in two woven wicker chairs up at the top of the rolling green, by the house, sit Rose and Brixie, like springtide queens overseeing the proceedings of their court. They seem to be taking a moment for themselves, as there’s no one around them. They look happy. Brixie throws her head back and laughs at something Rose has said, and a second later, she grabs Rose’s hand, urging her up out of her chair and into her lap, then claiming her fiancée’s mouth for a kiss.

 

He tries to be happy for them, and mostly, he is. Mostly. Maybe still a touch dubious.

 

On the other side of the bonfire, off near the edge of the orchard, he spies Dameron and Rey’s sister, each with a wine glass in their hands, shuffling along in a languid dance, heedless of the music’s lively rhythm. He’s grinning down at her and she’s petting his beard, wearing a goofy grin of her own.

 

It takes him a bit longer to find Rey. But finally, he does. She’s seated on the grass, so close to the trees that he startles and reels backwards into the shadows. Her back is to him, just like in the vision earlier, but it is bared now by a simple linen dress with thin straps. A jacket lays in the grass beside her.

 

(It reminds him of that dress from the ballet, what a vision in green she was, how he wanted to pull off his glove right there and discover if his distant memory of how soft her skin was still held true.)

 

He knows her by her profile, would know it anywhere. That straight line of her dainty nose, strong jaw, shadow of a dimple in her soft cheek, proud brow and the shiny russet brown hair, tumbling loosely down past her thin, sculpted shoulders…

 

She hasn’t seen him; she’s deep in conversation with Finn.

 

He’s spied on her enough this evening. The right thing to do is to step out from the trees and make his presence known. He should ask to speak with her alone, tell her everything.

 

Tell her all his truths.

 

Yet her voice drifts towards him, carried on the smoke and koyo-scented wind, and Ben is ashamed of himself, because he cannot resist the temptation. He stays hidden, and he listens.

 

“No, no,” she is assuring Finn, “That’s a perfect gift! I’ve no doubt they’ll love it.”

 

Finn shrugs. “What’re you gonna get them?”

 

“I don’t have much to offer,” she admits, sounding sheepish. “So I’ve started a collection of seashells. I was thinking I might… make something with them? It’s a rubbish present, isn’t—”

 

“Nah, no. It’s good. For Rose especially, she loves that kind of thing.” Finn sighs. “I… I just…”

 

“What is it?”

 

“I have no one to blame but myself, but I thought it’d be me having this party. With her, I mean.”

 

Ben strains, trying to hear what’s being said above the music and voices and the crackling roar of the fire, but then he realizes: neither of them are speaking. Just sitting, watching the party. Contemplating, maybe.

 

After a long time has passed, long enough that Ben is ready to go back the way he came and attempt to enter the party like a normal, well-adjusted thirty-seven year old man, Rey at last speaks up, asking softly:

 

“Do you regret it?”

 

“No.” He can tell Finn is shaking his head. “No, I don’t. I’m doing good work, important work. And I barely have time for myself, let alone a relationship with someone on the other side of the galaxy.”

 

A pause, full of all the unspoken other halves of that sentence. All of them start with ‘but’, and all of them must be too painful to say aloud.

 

“I think that’s a really noble sacrifice,” she says.

 

He snorts. “I’m a noble guy. Who would’ve guessed? Not me. Not back in my ‘trooper days. I don’t really know what I imagined for my future back then—guess I didn’t think I’d be alive this long, figured it wouldn’t matter. But I definitely never saw myself as a senator. Or as someone who’s noble.”

 

“I wonder, though,” she counters, “if your former fellow ’troopers might disagree?”

 

“Maybe.” Again, Finn’s shoulders twitch in a shrug. “Maybe they would.” He falls quiet, thoughtful. “You understand, though, don’t you? Regret.”

 

“Of course,” she replies, without hesitation.

 

Ben watches as Finn turns his head, watches his friend study the love of his life. Of course? Of course she understands regret?

 

 _What do you regret, Rey? What have_ you _done wrong? All the wrong is on my side._ She knows that… doesn’t she?

 

Would that he could go to her, touch her, speak to her. But like the stoical evergreens around him, he is rooted to his spot. A silent observer, nothing more.

 

“Still feeling that these days?” Finn asks. “Regret?”

 

“Always, I think. But…”

 

“But?”

 

“I’m living with it.” She rests her head on Finn’s shoulder. “And I’ve decided to forgive myself.”

 

“Good choice,” he says lightly, though there’s a strain to his voice. “I know… maybe I should stay outta this, but… I know there’s still feelings there, on his side. I understand if you want to give up on him, but I hope you don’t.”

 

She tilts her face upwards to fix Finn with a look that Ben can’t quite see from this angle, though he’s dying to.

 

A second later, Finn chuckles dryly, interpreting the wordless reply. “Yeah, yeah. Same with Rose. I mean… I’m happy for her. Just…”

 

“What?”

 

“I dunno.” A beat. “You think there’s a difference?”

 

Her hair shimmers in the firelight as she shakes her head. Her brow is furrowed, she clearly hasn’t followed Finn’s train of thought. Ben waits with held breath, compelled by the emotion of this exchange.

 

“Between men and women,” Finn explains. “Who can love longer.”

 

He’d known his friend had held back in previous conversations, when they’d discussed the dissolution of his and Rose’s romantic relationship, but still Ben feels a pang of sympathy for the man. Here, at his ex-girlfriend’s engagement party, so soon after they themselves ended things, surrounded by friends he must share with her while she celebrates a life she cannot share with him. His pain is so visceral, it hits Ben like a sonic hammer to the face.

 

This is what he did to Rey, isn’t it? It’s a wonder she still speaks to him at all. He flinches from the shame. And then she sighs so heavily, Ben feels it in his bones.

 

“There’s no difference, Finn. We all fall in love. Some fall out of it and move on with their lives. Some stay in love, even if existence or hope is gone. It’s harder for those of us who are trapped in a life that isn’t what we’d hoped for. The…” she falters for a minute, her voice gone raspy, and when she begins again, he can hear the wobble in it, the slight congestion that comes from the onslaught of tears, “…the ‘what if’s’ eat us alive.”

 

A note of longing rings out in her words. It is both epiphany and condemnation; it burns him, it baptizes him. He is born anew in that longing, that sorrow.

 

“Yeah,” Finn grunts, and his voice is rough too. Hoarse. Is he crying? Ben can’t see his friend’s face, but the way the man’s shoulders sag suggests he might be.

 

This silence is longer than the last, and heavier too. He can sense it, whether by the language of their posture or by the Force, he doesn’t know. He almost leaves; this is too personal, too private a moment of shared pain.

 

He doesn’t belong here.

 

Finn sniffs. “I’m not so sure, though,” he says, tone light once more. “Men’s bodies are stronger than women’s. Stronger bodies, stronger feelings… so we love harder, right?”

 

“Or maybe women do, because we’re stuck at home raising babies and washing dishes.”

 

When she pushes off his shoulder to squint at him, there is incredulous amusement in her steepled brows, her pursed lips. Even in her incredulity, face half illuminated by the dancing red-gold light, half steeped in the shadows of the forest, she is the most beautiful thing Ben has ever seen.

 

His fingertips sting with the fierce need to touch her.

 

Finn breaks first, and then Rey does, and their debate devolves into hapless laughter; Rey collapsed on the grass, clutching her side, Finn giggling at a pitch Ben has never heard before as he wipes tears from his eyes.

 

“Ridiculous,” she says, once she’s calmed.

 

“But I got you to laugh, didn’t I?”

 

“You did. Thanks, Finn.”

 

“Anytime, Rey.”

 

Ben leaves then, backing away in determined silence, once again filled with a renewed sense of purpose, this time resolved not to let anything dissuade him.

 

He’s going to get it right this time. Because she deserves it.

 

Because they both do.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Rey supposes she’s done a fairly decent job hiding her disappointment by the time the celebration begins to wind down. People are calling out goodnights and farewells as they wander off to their speeders and landcraft; she returns them from a distance with cheerful waves and tempered smiles. The fire has gone from a raging blaze, nearly as tall as the Great House, to a heap of glowing logs stacked upon a pit of red embers.

 

He didn’t come.

 

She tugs her jacket closer around her, though the night is still warm. Borrowing Brixie’s sundress had seemed like such a good idea hours earlier, with the late afternoon sun beating down on the world. Now she feels too exposed, too vulnerable.

 

It was probably obvious to everyone here tonight why she was dressed nicely, why her hair was clean and combed and a berry-scented rouge adorned her lips. Why a single Naboo night pearl hangs from her neck.

 

Has she made a fool of herself?

 

She glances up from the fire. Finn has wandered off to talk to Poe; she catches snippets of their conversation, here and there. They’re discussing Armitage’s disappearance and the rumors swirling around. Some are saying he’s a secret Sith lord, others are saying no, he’s only _working_ for a Sith lord. Some have heard he’s a member of the Crimson Dawn syndicate, others say Black Sun, and others yet _swear_ it’s Wandering Star.

 

Everyone seems to know it all, and also not know a damn thing.

 

Rey startles when she feels her holoprojector, tucked away in the pocket of her jacket, begin to vibrate. She’d only brought it to the party on a whim, and some vague hope that he might send a message.

 

Is it too much? To hope that whatever she’s received is from him? That something has interfered and that’s why he’s not here? The holoprojector has been silent and still all night, just another facet of her disappointment. But she pulls it out now to find one of its lights is blinking green.

 

Someone has sent her a hologram.

 

Affecting an air of nonchalance, trying not to draw any attention and not speaking to anyone, she rises and makes her way to the Great House, where she locks herself inside one of the second-floor ‘freshers. There’s less chance of an interloper up here.

 

Then she activates the hologram with the press of a few buttons. The quality is terrible, of course, but she recognizes the background of the message. And the sender.

 

It’s Ben.

 

By the eternal core, it’s Ben.

 

He’s in the main hold of the _Millennium Falcon_. That’s clearly the yellowed patent leather booth behind him.

 

After a few seconds of staring slightly to the left of the camera, fussing with something off-screen, he releases a heavy sigh.

 

“I keep messing this up when I’m around you,” he begins.

 

A beat.

 

“So I’m doing it this way. Because it’s too important, Rey.”

 

Another beat, his dark eyebrows knitting together.

 

“I’m tired of getting it wrong.”

 

He looks down at something, maybe something he’s rested on the holotable. As she waits for him to speak again, Rey wonders if he ever plays dejarik anymore, if he ever plays anything at all. If he laughs. If he’s happy. What he’s going to say. Where the _Falcon_ is.

 

“I—I wrote the words down. The right words—what I’ve wanted to say…”

 

He looks up again. Takes a breath, as though preparing himself for a great trial. His voice deepens.

 

“I can listen no longer in silence.”

 

The hologram projection of his strangely handsome face is cobalt blue, flickering, and full of static. I must speak to you, Rey. You… you pierce my soul. I am… half agony, half hope. Tell me that I am not too late.” He groans, runs his hands through his dark, silver-streaked hair, then refocuses his gaze on the holorecorder. “I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Do _not_ say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. Not even in jest.”

 

Are those _her_ words? Taken out of context, misunderstood. But how…?

 

She freezes.

 

The party. It’s possible, she supposes, that he was there eavesdropping, in person or in the Force. She’d been keeping an eye out for him all evening, so the idea that she missed him naturally comes as a shock. But it’s the only explanation, isn’t it? He must’ve only overheard part of her and Finn’s conversation and drawn his own conclusions.

 

_Oh, Ben._

 

Here the recording of Ben takes a deep breath, and looks down at something outside the holorecorder’s field of view. _Perhaps at whatever he’s written, perhaps at his hands,_ Rey manages to think, through the veil of shock and timid, fluttering hope. She wishes she were there with him, so she could take them in her own, and offer him the confidence to carry on.

 

But this is only a hologram, so she must wait. Eventually, when he looks up again, his features have settled. He looks… Fierce. Determined. Self-assured.

 

“I have loved none but you,” he says.

 

“I’ve been…” he trails off again. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t have any excuse for how I’ve been these last few months. Resentful at first. Unjust. Weak, too often.” He scoffs, seemingly at himself. “But, Rey… not inconstant. I came to Chandrila for _you_. Coruscant, for you. Stayed on Batuu, for you. Didn’t you—didn’t you know?”

 

He huffs. “How could you, when I didn’t say it? I just _expected_ you to know. Foolish.”

 

Another toss of his head, his dark hair bouncing for a moment before settling back around his face.

 

“I spied on you, just now, at the party. I… regret that. I regret so many things. I’m so sorry, Rey. But… if you forgive me…”

 

She expects him to continue, but for some time, he doesn’t. He just sits there, staring down at his hands, breathing hard.

 

Finally, flicking his eyes up to the camera once more, he says quietly, “I’m on the beach.”

 

She nearly faints at those words— lightheaded and dumbfounded, thoughts eddying around her mind too rapidly to take hold— but she knows now how all this could end, the happiness that is positioned directly before her. There for the taking, or the losing. She will not falter this time; there will be no hesitation or doubt.

 

“Come see me?” he whispers. “I’ll wait for you, as long as it takes.”

 

Another beat. He works his jaw, a muscle underneath his left eye twitches.

 

“If… that’s what you want.”

 

He nods solemnly, then reaches forward. There is a click; the holoprojection goes dark, its blue light disappearing and leaving only the simple ‘fresher of the Great House and Rey’s barely-constrained elation.

 

The honesty of it, the earnestness. Her heart is racing. Immediately, she resets the hologram. Watches it again. Once. Twice. Three times. Four. It’s always the same: Ben, eyes shining, voice steady, professing his love for her. His regret. His devotion.

 

It’s too much, far too close to a daydream, too close to everything she’s ever wanted to hear from him.

 

The last time she got what she wanted, she was stuck with a family that became her waking nightmare. _But they were the unknown,_ she reminds herself. _They were the safe unknown, and an anchor, and a childhood promise you couldn’t relinquish._

 

Ben is not unknown. This love that has her pulse fluttering, the tips of her fingers tingling, blinking back tears… this is the very opposite of unknown. This feels like going home. But for real this time; her true home. The one she found at nineteen, the one she let slip away.

 

Not again.

 

Rey knows now what she must do.

 

When she returns to the dying bonfire, it is with a lightness of step that has eluded her for some time. She smiles wide, and hugs the celebrating brides-to-be, whispering her congratulations in their ears.

 

“Are you leaving?” Rose asks, concerned.

 

Brixie hoots out her objections. “No-o-o, the night is young! Stay, dance!”

 

“I’m tired,” she tells them, with a gentle smile. “I think I’ll go to sleep.”

 

“Are you okay?” Rose again; a small hand lands on Rey’s shoulder and pulls her closer so the shorter woman can peer at Rey’s face in the dim light.

 

“I am,” she assures her. “Really. But it’s been a long day.”

 

“Oh-kay,” sighs Brixie, put-upon, but she clasps Rey in another hug, the smell of bonfire smoke and koyo wine lingering in her hair, and returns Rey’s smile once she lets go. “Breakfast at the Great House in the morning!”

 

“I’ll be there,” she replies, and turns, heading for the trees.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The forest is dark, and without moonlight or a glowrod to illuminate her path, she stubs her toes more than once.

 

The pain barely registers.

 

By the time she reaches sand, she’s on the verge of hyperventilation. If he left already, if he’s not there…

 

No. She can’t even let herself think it.

 

There’s nothing graceful about how she scrambles over the dunes and off across the beach, the sand sifting beneath her feet with each careless step, searching, searching in the lightless night, the ocean air gusting all around her, he must be here, he must be, let him be here, let it be true, let it be time…

 

Even in the mire, the _Millennium Falcon_ ’s white hull gleams like a skeletal beast, unmistakable. The sight of it robs her of the last of her sense; without thinking, she breaks into a full sprint.

 

 _Ben_ , she thinks, blinded by need and love and urgency, her legs pumping furiously, _Don’t leave. I’m here._

 

And that is how she manages to trip over his seated form.

 

“Ah!” she yelps, flung forward, unable to right herself in time, her legs hopelessly tangled with his. But he catches her as she falls, his hands clasped around her waist, and gently sets her on her knees by his side.

 

“Steady.”

 

“There you are,” she wheezes.

 

“Here I am.”

 

Maybe it was the hologram. Maybe it’s that she can’t see him in the dark, can’t read her projected fears into his expressions. Maybe it is as simple as this: Armitage’s deceit was the last straw, and Rey is done with anything that is not essential truth. Whatever it is, it has liberated her. Without prelude, absent trepidation, she begins to ramble.

 

“I’m not engaged to Armitage Hux—I never was. _Never_. He lied to you, I swear that. I don’t think I ever even really _liked_ him. I just… I was trying to figure out how to get back to you, on my own terms. I love you, Ben.” She fumbles for his face in the dark, and finds it damp; her heart seizes up in her chest. “I love _you_. I should have said that, at the ballet. I shouldn’t have frozen, I was so scared, I love you so much and I just—”

 

She feels him lean forward only an instant before his soft lips land on hers.

 

What that kiss does to her, she’ll never be able to explain. It’s more than sex, more than attraction and desire, more than his physical body and hers meeting. It’s about Rey letting go of fear, and choosing the life she wants, and being chosen in return. It’s about two lives that have been running parallel, lonely, for so long, finally converging once more.

 

But it’s also about sex. She inhales, sharply, and her senses are at once full of him, the rich deep scent that is uniquely Ben’s, the particular frequency at which the air around him always seems to vibrate.

 

He pulls her closer, until they are thigh-to-thigh, and she wraps her arms around his neck and leans on him, trusting him with her weight. He bears it without complaint, not wobbling in the slightest. His nose brushes her cheek, and his lips pluck at hers, urging her to open, just for him. To kiss him fully, with abandon.

 

Rey does.

 

The kiss becomes hungrier, more urgent, his tongue against hers; a soft noise escapes her throat at some point, like a whimper but needier.

 

“Rey,” he sighs into her mouth. “Come to the ship with me?”

 

She pulls back, just barely able to make out the distinctive features of his face— there, his heavy brow, there, the bony ridge of his long nose, and there, his pouting lips, fuller than usual after their prolonged kissing, and there, the scar that cleaves his right cheek— and she smiles at him, though she’s uncertain if he can see it.

 

“Yes. Yes, alright.”

 

The song of the sea sounds to her like the whole planet approves of this choice, like the galaxy is whispering its kindly encouragement. He stands then extends a hand, which she takes. But even once she is stable on her feet, knees wobbling slightly from the emotion of the moment, he does not let her go.

 

_Whoosh, swish, shurr._

 

Not an artificial roar, like in the cave on Bastatha, but the real sound, crashing again and again in her ears, while the smell of salt and sand tickles her nose and the wind tugs at her hair. There is safety here in the dark, and she steals one more moment of it, reaching up to run the pad of her thumb along the roughly knitted line of his scar.

 

Rubbing the tears in, or perhaps wiping them away. She hardly knows which, but he doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he leans into her hand, as though placing himself in her care.

 

_Whoosh, swish, shurr._

 

She smiles in the dark.

 

Hand in hand, they head off towards the _Falcon_.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You… watched the hologram?” he asks, once they’re settled in the old yellowed booth of the main hold. He’s leaning on the holotable, hands folded in front of him, eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance.

 

One of his legs bounces under the table; she can feel the reverberations from it in the booth seat.

 

He’s nervous.

 

“A few times,” she admits.

 

“I’m sorry, too.” It’s blurted out, like he couldn’t wait any longer to say it. His eyes flick over to her then back to his hands. “Kriff, Rey. I’m so sorry.”

 

Rey rests a hand on the bouncing thigh, effectively subduing it. When he looks her way again, she gives him a patient smile.

 

“For misleading Brixie,” he clarifies. “And… and for my behavior.” He gulps down a huge breath of air. “Towards you. I thought I didn’t care anymore, and when I realized I did…”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I only hurt us both. I hated it, seeing you that way.”

 

Something shifts in her chest, tightening, like a fist clenched around her heart. His voice is sincere, full of regret. Rey wants to kiss him now, but he’s still talking.

 

“And… I should’ve gone back. Six years ago.”

 

“You were fighting a war,” she says, trying to comfort him.

 

But he shakes his head. “Even before then. That same day. Han was so angry, and… he was right. I was… pride… my stupid…”

 

“You were hurt.” She leans into him, using her hand on his thigh to support herself, and he raises his arm to bring her closer, to lay it across her shoulders. “ _I_ hurt you.”

 

“Doesn’t matter.”

 

“It _does_ , Ben,” she insists. “We’ll never get anywhere pretending we haven’t both hurt each other. I’m done with that.”

 

He peers down at her, really studying her. His eyes seem fathomless in the dim light of the main hold, flecks of gold and green barely visible in the irises. He carefully lifts the night pearl from its resting place in the hollow of her throat, studying it. A muscle in his jaw shifts as he chews on nothing and contemplates.

 

“Okay. We’ve hurt each other,” he concedes, releasing the necklace.

 

“But we’re going to do better.” She smiles up at him hopefully. “Aren’t we?”

 

His nostrils flare; his breathing has become ragged. “Yes.”

 

“Can I tell you something?”

 

“Anything.”

 

“I’m so relieved we’re finally here—I never thought—I’m just so glad,” she says, hushed, “I feel I could cry.”

 

“Me too.” His arm around her tightens, pulling her in closer, and she goes happily, settling her body against his, burying her face in his dark green sweater.

 

“So happy,” he huffs, strained. “Happier than I deserve, probably.”

 

“No.” She lifts her head to shake it at him. “You _do_ deserve this. We both do.”

 

His lips wobble until he presses them into a firm line. Staring down at her, he gives her the tiniest nod. “When I was on Jakku, I asked Luke about you.”

 

“He told me.”

 

That earns an abashed laugh from him. “I asked if you’d changed between when he first met you and the second time, on Chandrila.” Again, he pauses; again, she waits patiently for him to go on. “Luke said yes. I told him that to me, you were exactly the same—incredible. Perfect.”

 

“Well, that’s not entirely true, is it?” She’s referencing that cruel initial impression Gozetta had reported back to her, and raises a brow at him in challenge. The question hangs in the air for a full minute. She can tell he remembers too; he looks down at his hands, shamefaced, and swallows.

 

“I _want_ it to have been. It’s what I should have said— _that_ was the truth.”

 

She reaches up and brushes back a stray lock of hair that has fallen down over his brow, something she has wanted to do for months.

 

“I’m an ass,” he groans.

 

Not bothering to repress her chuckle, she continues playing with his soft hair. “Oi, you’re alright.”

 

“Am I?”

 

“I’m very seriously considering keeping you.”

 

He grows serious once more. “When I saw you at the ballet with your family and that… that skrag, Hux… when he told me you two were engaged, I know I was a fool to believe it. But…”

 

Again, she rubs her thumb along the scar, cupping his face; her other hand reaches for his, entwining their fingers, as she’d wished she could do while watching the hologram. How long has she yearned to touch him? Rey can barely remember a time before the yearning.

 

“Did you know about him then?” she manages to ask. “That your mother thought he was associating with traitors?”

 

“I suspected,” he answers. “It was all rumors, conjecture—we didn’t have any proof yet.”

 

She nods. “She’s found something, I suppose.”

 

“Yeah. ‘Spose so.” He sighs. “And… what he said to me at the ballet, he was right. About me. I could see how he _would_ be the better choice for you. You’ve always been so loyal to your family, Rey. It was possible you’d do that for them—marry him. Maybe that’d make you happy, to make them happy.”

 

“I understand,” she says. “But I’ve given them enough of my life, haven’t I?”

 

“More than enough,” he hurries to agree. “But you’d listened to them—to Mashra—over me once before. Why not now? It ate me alive. The doubt.”

 

 _Is he quoting her, again, from her conversation with Finn?_ She peers up at him, searching; he nods.

 

When she finds the words to respond with, they are exhaled on a sigh. “I know. The difference is, I let Mashra persuade me to end things between us because she convinced me it was in _both_ of our best interests. That it was the safe option, the good option, for me _and_ for you. Nothing… nothing could have convinced me of that with Armitage.”

 

“You’re right, I know you are… all the old hurt came back, though,” he mumbles. “I couldn’t think clearly.”

 

Then he hangs his head, letting his brow touch hers, and closes his eyes. For a while they stay that way, speechless, breathing heavily, foreheads touching. There is pain in this embrace, in the unburdening of their sins, but there is comfort and forgiveness too.

 

Eventually, he gives a mirthless laugh. “Like I said. I’m an ass.”

 

“A forgiven ass,” she retorts. And, tentative: “Am… I? Forgiven?”

 

“Rey,” he gasps, seeking out her lips again. “Sweet, sweet, Rey.”

 

It is a salty kiss, the tang of both their tears mingling on their tongues, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and she doesn’t either. She crawls into his lap, straddling him, just like old times, like how they used to sit in this booth or in the crew’s quarters, kissing and kissing for hours. Another flutter of excitement stirs in her belly.

 

(And there is the insidious thought: they needn’t have gone through all the pain that led them to this kiss. They could have had this all along. _No_ , she scolds herself. She must let that go, because they have it _now_. There must be an end to what-might-have-been, there must be a resolution of only what-can-yet-be.

 

Together they will have to carry their past, to learn from it, but not let it rule them.)

 

“How could I stay mad at you, sweetheart?” The question is uttered in a low voice as he kisses a trail across her cheek, over her jaw, tilting her backwards so he can kiss along the column of her neck. “It’d be like staying mad at the best part of my own soul.”

 

“I love you,” she declares again, just because she can. Just because the last of the fear is gone, and the words taste divine.

 

“I love you,” comes his reply, as he nuzzles under her jacket, nudging the thin strap of her borrowed sundress with his nose.

 

His hands are warm on her bare legs, each one nearly encircling a thigh. Rey buries her fingers in his soft shiny hair and grinds her underwear-clad sex against the front of his trousers. She can feel him growing hard, only two layers of clothing between them; he makes a breathless, almost-pained sound against her shoulder when she tilts her hips and slides along his length.

 

“I love you,” he sighs, and she repeats it back.

 

They are being so careful with each other. He holds her gently, hands still traveling upwards, up to her behind, and she rubs his scalp in soft circles, breathing in the soap-clean scent of his hair. He darts an investigatory look up at her before licking a lewd stripe across her collarbone.

 

She can’t stifle her needy moan; her sex trembles at the sensation of his warm tongue rasping along sensitive skin. She’s growing heated now, even in her light dress, and lets him go long enough to tear off her jacket, dropping it carelessly before returning her fingers to his hair. She feels tender down there— probably leaving a stain on the front of his trousers, not that she can be bothered to care— and she feels soft and and she feels slick and she feels _need_.

 

Terrible need.

 

“Huh,” he grunts, winded, when she makes another pass with her hips, pressing harder against him, and then suddenly she is in the air, one of his hands still gripping her bottom, the other on her back, as he rises from the booth then hoists her onto the holotable.

 

For a moment, he leaves her there while he remains standing, one of his big hands planted on either side of her hips. He gazes down at her with wide eyes and tented trousers and it feels as though he is committing the sight of her like this, laid out across the cool dejarik-tiled surface, to memory.

 

And then he bends his elbows, lowering himself on top of her. His hands return to her thighs, and he gives a sharp yank, cradling himself between her legs.

 

He begins to rock his hips.

 

 _Stars_ , it’s good, just like this. Just how she remembers it and also something else, something more.

 

They’ve survived so much, and they’ve made it back to each other.

 

She could come this way, she knows it. Can feel it building, each time he rubs up against her. Her underwear is a mess, her thighs pinned to his sides. Breathy, needy little gasps escape her each time he makes contact with her clit.

 

“K-kiss,” she stutters; he complies, catching at her mouth, exploring it.

 

She remembers this too, recalls how strange she used to think the act of kissing was until the first time his lips touched hers, and how after that she couldn’t get enough, and all these years she has gone without, lips untouched, tongue serving no purpose but speech and mastication, just a utilitarian part of her body, and finally, _finally_ , her mouth is something lush and carnal once more.

 

Stroking her tongue against his, because she can and it feels nice when he responds by moaning into her mouth, she reaches down to grab his backside. Then, tugging at him, she urges him to go _harder_.

 

He does.

 

He moves his hips, each thrust so forceful that the table, which is bolted to the floor, begins to wobble precariously.

 

It’s happening, she can feel it. When he releases her thighs to clasp her hands in his, pinning them to the table, he lets his head hang above hers, staring into her eyes, and really puts his back into it. Her cunt begins to throb in time with his thrusts.

 

Rey hears herself make a sound she’s never made before, a low warbling sound, and her body gives itself over to the orgasm, cunt clenching down on nothing, legs shaking and tensed, eyes slamming shut from the immensity of it all. Without thinking, she pushes her hips up towards his. Light explodes kaleidoscopically across her eyelids. It keeps going, the sweet, hot pleasure of it, a familiar joy happily rediscovered.

 

She hangs suspended in air, nothing more than a sparking collection of nerves and a pair of eyes, opened now and watching his. Drowning, flying, free, pinned under him, seeing all the universe in those dark pupils and also nothing at all, just the endless void.

 

At last, the throbbing in her cunt begins to taper off. When she gives a contented little sigh, he stills his movements, then props himself back up on his hands.

 

“Just like old times,” he says, panting. The tiniest hint of a grin tugs at one corner of his mouth.

 

Rey nods. “But didn’t you…?”

 

“No.” Slowly, giving her time to tell him to stop, he reaches for the waistband of her underwear. “By the skin of my teeth, no.”

 

“Don’t you want to?”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

His hand has snuck under the elastic, down, over her curls, and then: cupping her. “You _really_ liked that,” he observes, a hint of wonder in his voice.

 

Like maybe he wasn’t sure. Like maybe he was worried.

 

“I always have.” She feels shy all of a sudden, exposed like this. “Didn’t you?”

 

He retracts his hand and sucks his fingers into his mouth. They emerge spit clean and shining. “You have no idea, Rey.”

 

She’s too wrung out to help as he works at her underwear, propping her hips up so he can get them off. The skirt of her dress has been pushed up around her ribs, but she doesn’t have the energy to fix it, so instead she remains reclined, watching him. After dropping the soaked garment somewhere behind him, he sucks in a sharp breath at the sight of her. The air of the hold is cool against her slick-dampened skin, but when she goes to close her legs, his hands are there on the inside of her thighs, keeping them open.

 

“Gorgeous,” he says, dazed, “So kriffing gorgeous.”

 

“Ben,” she whines.

 

That seems to break the spell. His eyes flick up to hers, wide and hungry. “Sleeper,” he growls. “I want you in a sleeper.” A contemplative pause. “I want you in _my_ sleeper.”

 

Nodding, she blurts out, “Yes, that—absolutely, that.”

 

As if on command, he sweeps her up into his arms. Rey scrabbles to fling her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, giggling with exhilaration and joy and relief, overcome by it, even Ben is allowing himself to laugh as he lumbers towards the captain’s quarters with her in his arms. And she thinks to herself: _in this moment, I could die happy._

 

Just like this.

 

 

. . .

 

 

She doesn’t, of course. And when he sets her down carefully on the mattress then seats himself next to her, a wave of solemnity washes over them both. Maybe they’re succumbing to the memories of the last time they were in a sleeper together like this— on the _Ravager_ , where their shared fear was already spelling out their doom— maybe they’re weighing the gravity of all that has passed since then.

 

Maybe they’re both just grasping the significance of this location, this reunion, this moment.

 

They need to be closer, Rey decides, and clambers back into his lap, settling astride him then letting her head droop forward to rest upon his shoulder. She feels him wrap his arms around her and squeeze gently.

 

“Eight years,” she whispers.

 

His embrace tightens. “Yeah.”

 

“Each one felt like a lifetime.”

 

“Ten lifetimes.”

 

“When were you in the Kaliida Nebula?”

 

He twists his head to look at her. It’s a strange question, she knows; a non-sequitur. Probably not what he’d expected. Her lips twitch. In response, he nudges her head up with his shoulder until they’re face to face once more.

 

“I was a kid. Eleven, twelve maybe. Han and I were on the Balmorra Run.”

 

“I saw,” she says, not bothering to keep the awe from her voice. “It was beautiful.”

 

“You...?”

 

She nods. “Yes. In the dream, you told me to go—“

 

His laugh is chagrined. “Just being sentimental—”

 

“And I did.” Rey looks down at the soft fibers of his sweater. “In the Force, maybe. Like ghosts. Little Ben and young Han.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“You looked happy.”

 

Now it is she who searches _his_ face. Is the memory a good one for him? Can they share it?

 

“I was.” He smiles fondly, cranes forward to press a gentle kiss against her lips.

 

“So happy,” she continues, as he pulls away, “And so young. I thought I would feel regret or jealousy or anger at seeing you and your father, but I didn’t. I just felt lucky to bear witness.”

 

“I’ll take you back there,” he vows. “Anywhere you want to go. Or I’ll follow you, and you can take me. Anything you want.”

 

“Anything?” Rey feels her smile turn kittenish, her mood swinging towards mischievous.

 

Groaning, he bows his head once more to nuzzle at her clavicle. “Anything.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The dress goes first, and then he rises from the sleeper, and soon after, his clothes follow.

 

His solid torso, long legs, dusted with dark hair, thick arms, wide shoulders; it’s all just as she remembers from the falls in Batuu. His flushed, bobbing cock looks exactly as it did on Jakku all those years ago. Intimidatingly large, its deep ruddy color speaking to Ben’s ardor.

 

Rey glances down at her own body. She’s less stringy than she was back then, filled out somewhat, arms and ribs no longer striated with gristle and bone, but she’s still a slender woman. She too has a dusting of hair along her arms and legs, lighter than his, shining blonde in the light of the captain’s quarters. Her breasts are small but round, and their own weight makes them hang a bit lower than they did at nineteen. The hair around her cunt is dark, trimmed, as has always been most practical for life on Jakku. It’s damp with the remnants of her orgasm.

 

Does all this excite him like it once did?

 

Lolling against the pillows, she steals a peek from under her lashes.

 

He’s seated on the edge of the sleeper again, kicking off his second sock. But his eyes are riveted to hers. Slowly, they meander down her body. His chest rises and falls in an unsteady rhythm; he clenches his hands into tight fists.

 

“You are…”

 

“Yeah?” she interjects, too edgy, too needy.

 

Taking a deep breath, he crawls across the mattress, careful not to hit his head on the overhang. He settles himself on his belly, between her legs.

 

“Good,” he rumbles. “Everything about you is so _good_ , Rey.”

 

“I’ve changed since last time—my body has changed.”

 

“Has it?” he asks, shouldering her thighs apart as he inches closer. Then, before she can answer, he dips his head, and licks a bold line up the center of sex. “Hmm, maybe it has.”

 

He takes another pass, like he’s collecting the wetness seeping there. Their eyes meet again, a weighted pause hanging between them.

 

“Breathe, Rey,” he bids her, and she does. Deep, gulping breaths, watching him watch her. “Change is good.”

 

Another lick, this one more targeted, circling her aching clit before giving her what she needs and taking the tiny bundle in his mouth. He sucks on it, and Rey’s hips jerk up off the mattress.

 

“Easy.” A heavy forearm lands on her belly. “You’ll give me a black eye.”

 

“Hah,” she coughs out.

 

“Remember how it used to be? With the Force?”

 

She blinks at him. (What she remembers immediately is the fear, originating from him, and then magnified by her, a malevolent feedback loop between the two of them.)

 

“Not the fear,” he says, with a shake of his head, like their minds are synced. “How good it felt. Remember?”

 

Hesitant, questing, she lays her hand on his shoulder. It’s nice, a very excellent example of a shoulder. Bunched up muscle and smooth skin, a mole here and there to offset his pale complexion. She keeps going, tracing a dark vein up the side of his throat to his jaw, up his long face to his heavy brow, up into his thick hair, a little damp around the temples from his exertions earlier.

 

She closes her eyes. There he is, warm and bright. Digging deeper, she feels other things, sensations: he’s grinding his cock against the soft mattress to relieve some of the pressure, her own smell is thick in his nostrils, his heart is thundering in his chest, need coiled up in every tendon, like he’s ready to pounce.

 

Pounce on her.

 

Rey gasps; her cunt flutters, and she can feel a few drops of precome dribble up over the head of his cock.

 

“See,” he says, not a question, but an affirmation. “Remember.”

 

“I remember.”

 

“Good. Stay with me, now.”

 

Then he takes her, all of her, into his mouth. The noise he makes is obscene, like sucking on a juicy jogan fruit; it’s filthy, and mortifying, and raw, and perfect. He’s a big man with a big mouth and he leaves nothing untouched by his tongue or his lips, no crevice, not a single bit of her skin.

 

It’s everything.

 

But what’s more is that she can feel him, in the Force, can feel how much he’s enjoying it.

 

 _That,_ she mentally revises, _is the everything part._

 

She’s so wet that by the time he eases one finger up into her, soon followed by another, it seems like there’s hardly any resistance at all. She just welcomes him in, her body eager for him, ready, needing it, needing more. He curls them forward and begins a steady massage of the front wall of her cunt, and Rey loses track of everything.

 

There is a sensation that has her confused, her eyes flying open and seeking his. It’s as if she’s suddenly in desperate need of the ‘fresher; she almost tells him to stop. Her legs kick out at nothing until he pins her with an intent look. She feels him, all calm assurance, his own need and hers, all adoration, all yearning and hunger, all full of the intention to make her come. The massaging continues, and the urge to relieve herself ebbs, something else taking its place.

 

Something _tremendous_.

 

Her returns his attention to her labia, eyes still darting up to meet hers from time to time, and Rey goes limp, letting her legs rest over his back, letting him bring about this upheaval inside her.

 

When the shivering begins, she knows she’s in trouble. She climbs, and she climbs, and she climbs, as if her body were a great spiral staircase, and to conquer it, she must reach the top. Everything— her pleasure, and his, and the love he feels which surges inside her own chest, and his cock, so hard it aches, and that throbbing deep inside her— wraps a tight cocoon around them, warm and snug, inescapable. She’s not just going to come again, she’s going to come _hard_.

 

And then she does.

 

She clenches down like a vise on his fingers, and then again, again and again, wave after wave of muscles responding, of ecstasy, of gratitude. A nervous sob escapes her, the feeling in her cunt and in her legs and at the tips of her toes and the blissful blank shorting out her mind, all of it is too much all at once.

 

“Be-e-e-n!” she whines, as her vision whites out.

 

For a few seconds longer, he keeps going, until she begins to buck her hips, over-sensitive to the pleasure so sharp it's edging on pain. Only then does he gingerly withdraw his fingers. But even after, he continues petting her— gentle, firm touches— until she’s descended the staircase. Until she’s back in the sleeper with him, back in her body.

 

He’s definitely better at that than she remembers— and what she remembers is that he was very good— or maybe it’s just that the memory is so worn that she doesn’t really remember it at all, doesn’t know where the memory has deteriorated and fantasies have filled in the gaps, but this… this is just _fine_.

 

“Wait, wait,” she sputters, once the ability to form words has returned to her. She tugs at his hair to get him to lift his head from where he’s rested it on her belly. “Have you… been practicing this?”

 

“You’re asking me if I’ve been with someone else,” he says. His cheeks are shiny from her, but he makes no move to wipe them off.

 

“I would understand, Ben. It’s been a long time.”

 

He shakes his head, eyes overbright and piercing as he pushes himself up and crawls along her body. “No one. Have you?”

 

“No.”

 

Collapsing beside her, his cock prods her thigh, and he puffs out a shaky breath against her shoulder. “Oh,” is all he says, though she wonders if he wants to say more.

 

She can _feel_ that he wants to say more.

 

“But—you seem—” she chews the inside of her cheek, unsure how to phrase the question.

 

“I said I haven’t done it, I didn’t say I never thought about it.” He lays a kiss on the ball of her shoulder. “Or that I never discussed technique with anyone.” Another kiss, this one in the center of her sternum, after he’s propped himself up on his elbow. “Or that I never watched holos of it.” This kiss, between her breasts.

 

“Me too,” she sighs, clasping his neck to keep him there. He takes the hint, and begins to nose at her right breast, before laying a soft kiss to its underside.

 

“You too?” he prompts, when she falls silent.

 

“I thought about it. This. Sex. I never talked about it, but I thought about it all the time, until I could barely remember what our first time was like anymore.”

 

“Well then.”

 

He pulls her nipple into his mouth, sucks, and releases. She’d thought before that he’d wrung her out, back on the holotable, and had felt the same only a moment ago, but the swollen skin of her sex pulses at the feeling of his mouth on her, heart and her cunt palpitating at the same jittery frequency.

 

“Time to make a new memory,” he murmurs, and without waiting for her reply, he dives back in.

 

He doesn’t stop until she reaches for his cock. The skin there is so soft, like satyn almost, smooth and warm. When she closes her fingers around him— a challenge, she very nearly can’t— he makes a pained grunting noise.

 

“Wait,” he says, pulling away.

 

“Come here, please, come back here,” she babbles, and reaches for him again.

 

“Rey, I’m barely holding—”

 

But she’s got him in her fist. One pump, two; that’s all it takes. He wheezes, his head falling onto her shoulder, mouthing sloppily at her, and his cock gives a fierce twitch as his hips jerk towards her.

 

“Uh,” is the only sound he makes, inarticulate and yet immensely gratifying to Rey, as he splatters come all over her belly. She feels his pleasure like it belongs to her, not the succession of deep throbs that signals her own climax, but one bright burst that starts at the base of his spine and rips through him, almost violently. He’s panting, great deep breaths, and after a moment, she realizes… he’s shaking.

 

“Ben,” she croons, and pulls him into her arms, wrapping herself around him. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Spent, they lie on the mattress, Rey’s still-trembling legs tangled with his.

 

“That was…” she tries, but her mind is still a little fried, so the thought fades into a suggestive titter.

 

In lieu of a response, Ben leans over the edge of the sleeper and opens one of the tucked-away storage compartments. He returns to her embrace with a small towel, which he uses to clean his face, then her belly. Once he’s finished, he groans, and pulls her close, close enough that every part of them is in contact, her breasts squashed up against his chest, her leg thrown over his hip. Whisper-light kisses, a succession of them, are passed along her features as she holds him, running her hand along the hard contours of his back.

 

The lull drifts on and on, all sense of urgency momentarily abated.

 

“Good,” he says at last. “That was good.”

 

“Mmm.”

 

He clears his throat. “I—didn’t—I hadn’t meant to…” His expression turns hangdog; he glances down at her belly.

 

“I did,” she sends back. “I meant for you to. I wanted it.”

 

“C’mere.”

 

He kisses her soundly then. There is so much tenderness in that kiss, in the way his hands roam on unhurried expeditions across her body, re-learning her, in how he breaks away to look into her eyes while he dips a finger into her cunt. The slide is easy, slick, and the feel of him inside stirs a gentle echo of her prior orgasm.

 

When he pulls his hand away, he sucks the finger into his mouth. It does something funny to her heart, to see him taste her like that.

 

“So good,” he says, around the digit. “Sweet.”

 

“Making you come like that made me feel young again,” she confesses.

 

His brows draw together; she can practically see the wheels turning in his mind. “You’re twenty-seven, Rey—you _are_ young.”

 

“No.” She shakes her head and collapses back onto the pillow. He follows, leaning over her. “Nineteen young. First time young.”

 

“I’m not so young anymore either,” he replies lightly, tipping his chin down at his flaccid cock. “Sure you want to be with a thirty-seven year old virgin?”

 

“Ben,” she chides. “Do you have to ask?”

 

“In the interest of truth.”

 

“In the interest of the truth, then—since the first time I saw you standing in the junkyard, arguing with Constable Zuvio—”

 

“Han was arguing, not me,” he corrects.

 

“—you’re all I’ve wanted.” The old longing, the heartbreak, sneaks up on her; she feels her lips wobble and an ache rise in her throat a moment before her vision blurs with tears. “I can’t… what it did to me, back then… sending you away…”

 

Ben pulls her into his arms, then hoists himself up until he’s propped in a seated position against the sleeper’s nest of fluffy pillows. She draws her legs in, curling up as small as she can, and he cradles her. But the tears burn their way through anyway, down her cheeks; so she tucks her face under his chin, and irrigates the hard planes of his chest.

 

“I know I hurt us both that day,” she sobs, “but I was the one who had to stay, seeing you everywhere I looked, and it _killed_ me.”

 

He rocks her languidly. That’s all. Doesn’t say a word. And she’s grateful for that, because this is not a confession of sins that requires counsel, this is a confession of pain that requires only solace, only understanding, only mercy. So while she weathers the years-old aftershocks of that pain, he rocks her, humming a lullaby she can’t catch in her ear, and she cries, and together they get through it.

 

“Promise me something,” he says, voice rough as gravel, when her sobs have subsided.

 

She sniffles. “Anything.”

 

“Promise me you’ll trust yourself from now on. Your own heart, your own mind.” When she glances up at him, she sees that his cheeks are wet too. “Please, Rey.”

 

Her breath catches at the sight of him so anguished. “I promise,” she chokes out. “I will.”

 

“Good.” He nods. “Good.” A loud breath blown out through his nose, then: “You were afraid back then. Do you remember? How we… almost…” he seems to falter, like he’s losing his nerve, “Maybe you don’t. I do.”

 

It all comes rushing back: the abandoned TIE bomber, the bunk, dusty old bedding, the Uthuthmas that attacked them, the Force, binding them together with their fear and lust, the TIE fighter they lifted together, a leisurely speeder ride across the desert, his arms holding her as they sat in the middle of the Crackle, shining glass from a war she’d never seen stretching in every direction, a day meant just for them, a sickening feeling that something bad was coming, the end swooping in on them like a ravenous Vworkka…

 

Mashra’s warning, stoking all her fears.

 

The taste of him in her mouth, and a temporary reprieve from the ruin that laid ahead. A drawing, sketched in desperation.

 

Ben, marching away from her.

 

A red sunset.

 

“Rey.”

 

His hands on her, bringing her in close. His mouth, licking at her, just like he did now. The wide, blunt edge of his cock, only just beginning to sink into her…

 

All that terrible fear.

 

“I haven’t forgotten either,” she says at last, with a shake of her head, dispelling the memories. “But—it was pregnancy that scared me, not this.” She rests a sweaty palm on his chest; she can feel his heart racing.

 

“And now?”

 

“I don’t think I’m ready for a baby, Ben. I might not… so much has happened, I just…”

 

He dips his head, brushing his lips across hers. “I know.”

 

She nods, grateful.

 

“In the military, they understand that personnel need an outlet,” he tells her. “So the medbay administers contraceptive implants to all male soldiers and pilots.”

 

“Implant?”

 

He takes her hand and rests it on the inside of his bicep. “There.”

 

She can just feel it there, a tiny rod under the skin, something she never would have noticed had he not pointed it out to her.

 

“This… can you still… you know,” she drops her voice to a mumble, “have sex?”

 

She gets a huffed laugh for her question, and despite the intimacy of their position, she thinks she detects a hint of a blush across his wide cheekbones.

 

“What do you think we’ve been doing?”

 

“No, but—what I mean is, no babies? If we go all the way, that is.”

 

“No babies.”

 

“And all the males have this?” she wonders aloud, still prodding at the implant.

 

“Unless the species doesn’t reproduce sexually or it’s the male that gestates, or the male elects not to, they all have some version of it.”

 

The muscle tenses; he’s flexing it, she realizes. Rey looks up at his face and then breaks, giggling at the needy expression she finds there. “Huh,” she marvels. “Nice arm. Very good form.”

 

That earns another red-faced huff from him. And it does not escape her notice that his cock is growing hard again; it prods at the underside of her thigh, so she adjusts herself in his lap, once again bracketing his hips with her legs. It’s also flushed a deep red once again, trapped between her sex and his belly, and more rigid than even a second ago. When he glances down then back up at her again, she sees a shift in the light behind his eyes, now full of purpose.

 

“Trying to impress you, Rey.” He tugs her closer, so they are flush.

 

“You do. You have.” Her voice goes soft, not on purpose, just because the atmosphere between them has shifted too, back towards something charged, something full of potential, and to speak any louder feels wrong.

 

“So.” She can see the sharp jut of his throat dip and rise, as he swallows. “If you wanted to…”

 

“I do. I do want to.”

 

“Me too.”

 

“For _real_ ,” she jokes.

 

“For real.” He leans back to smirk at her. “Finally.”

 

“We’ve had so much practice in dreams, this should be a breeze for us, right?”

 

“A breeze,” is his murmured agreement, as his eyes sink down to her breasts. He surges forward, simultaneously bending her back with an arm banded around her lower back for support, and also catching a nipple between his lips.

 

She keens at that, at his tongue laving over puckered, sensitive skin; he releases her only to bend her back further, so he can kiss the tender swell underneath, too. Rey smiles to herself, at how eagerly he applies himself to the task of worshipping her body. She can feel his enjoyment reverberating through her, amplifying her own.

 

The two of them are like a möbius strip; they could live off of this, she imagines, off of each other, never leaving this sleeper.

 

Rey wouldn’t mind.

 

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she tells him softly, playing with his mussed hair.

 

“Hm?”

 

“You and me. How it would go, if it ever happened.”

 

“Tell me,” he groans against her breast.

 

“You’d sit just like this, and…” His teeth pinch the tight bud of her nipple, ever so slightly, but it takes her breath away, and distracts her from her train of thought.

 

“Don’t get shy on me now,” he admonishes. “I’d sit like this. Then?”

 

Rey takes a deep breath. “You’ll keep your eyes on me. And—and I’ll call the shots.”

 

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he murmurs.

 

“I say when, and how fast.”

 

“Mm.”

 

“I decide,” she says, more insistent this time.

 

“Okay,” he agrees easily, migrating from her breasts up to her neck.

 

“And you’ll trust me… to do it right.”

 

That gets his attention. He pulls back to frown at her. “Anyway you do it would be right. This,” he motions between them, “could never be wrong.”

 

She bites the inside of her cheek, just to check that this is real and not another dream. It stings, slightly, just like his teeth did. “You’ll help me, though, won’t you?”

 

“Mmhmm,” he hums, eyes lingering on her marked up areolae. She think she hears him utter, under his breath: “Perfect.”

 

“We’ll go slow,” she dictates.

 

“Good,” he breathes against her sternum, tickling her and making her shiver, before pressing an apologetic kiss there.

 

She yanks lightly on his hair, needing to know he’s paying attention. “Really slow.”

 

“Really slow,” he echoes. “Are you nervous?”

 

“A bit,” she confesses.

 

The confession provokes another frown from him. “Why?”

 

“Because I’ve never _done_ this before.”

 

“But we have, Rey,” he says, shaking his head. “Many times.”

 

She huffs. “Not like _this_.”

 

“It’ll be like the dreams,” he reasons, hands stroking up and down her back, “but better.”

 

“Because it’s real.”

 

His lips twitch. “Mhmm.”

 

She knows all this, yet she can’t help the twinge of anxiety she feels. “What if it hurts?”

 

“We’ll stop. If that’s what you want,” he answers, without hesitation.

 

“What if you don’t like it?” she sends back, aware that she’s just peppering him with questions because she’s nervous, and unable to resist doing it anyway.

 

“Impossible.” His voice rumbles, low, at that one, and he gently clasps her jaw in his hand. “Look at me.” She does, with a thick swallow. “Impossible,” he repeats.

 

“What if _I_ don’t like it?”

 

He sighs, releasing her. “We’ll figure out why.”

 

“What if it’s not as good as the dreams? Will you leave?”

 

“Rey…”

 

She leans in to kiss him, nervous that she’s pushed too far. But he breaks it off, clearly determined to reply. “It’s you and it’s me, Rey. In the end, this is it.”

 

“You and me.” Now it is Rey who’s echoing.

 

“Do you trust me?” he asks, in response. “I trust you, completely.”

 

Pulling air into her lungs, trying to calm her racing heart, she gives a slow turn of her hips, sliding herself against him. He’s so hard, and twitching against her sex, and she reaches down to feel the honeyed drip of arousal leaking from herself.

 

“…I trust you,” she replies, with a soft kiss against the scar that crosses his collarbone. In response, he begins to play with the pearl resting against her throat.

 

“I’ll take care of you.”

 

“Safe, and free, and loved,” she mumbles, low, almost to herself. But he hears, and affirms:

 

“You are all of those.”

 

So she turns her head, and finds his lips, and while they’re kissing— and oh, what a delicate kiss it is, what care he puts into it, holding her, his folded legs a seat for her— she leans back on one hand and brings the other down to his cock, stroking it only once before rising up onto her knees.

 

Slowly, slow, she notches the flared head against herself.

 

“Okay,” she mutters.

 

“Take your time.”

 

She braces herself, and bears down on him. Nothing happens.

 

“Relax, Rey.” His thumb lands on her clit, stroking tight circles. “Deep breaths. Relax.”

 

“Uh,” is the breathless sound that escapes her, and her thighs begin to tremble, reveling in the soft pleasure. “Help me.”

 

He does. She feels him take hold of himself, and push up into her, but he keeps kneading her clit, and after a minute, everything does seem to loosen up, and Rey sinks down, down, one breath, two breaths, down— it’s happening, she’s taking him— and she looks up to find a rapturous expression on his face as he watches the place where they are joined.

 

Her thighs are beginning to burn now, from the strain of holding herself up, the control required to move like this, until one of his big hands cups her behind and supports her.

 

“So good,” he murmurs.

 

There is a strange symphony of sounds in her ears, the low drone of metal vibrating, and at the same time, the high jingling peal of a bell, from somewhere far away. Is it their bell? Still ringing after all these years? She can’t tell, and she can’t focus on it, because she’s uncomfortable at the feeling of being filled like this, because it’s unfamiliar to her body, because it’s new and strange, but also because she’s overheated, because for lack of a better word, it is so undeniably _sensuous_ to have him inside.

 

And they’ve done this dozens of times, but in dreams, where it was not their real flesh, not their real nerves. There was always a dulled, blurred edge to the dreams. Not here.

 

Her instincts urge her on; but although she knows exactly how to move in her mind, her muscles have no memory of it. So it is hesitant at the start, a tiny rocking motion, back and forth. Experimenting, she gives a more confident swirl of her hips; when he drags in a ragged breath in response, she’s sure she’s hit on something good.

 

Down, down, down Rey pushes, all the way down. She mewls in the back of her throat when she feels the crisp hairs around his cock against her sex, exulting in the knowledge that she’s taken him all in, dizzy with joy and relief and triumph.

 

The bell, the bell is tolling. Louder and louder every second, nearly deafening.

 

“Do you—do you hear that?” she gasps. “Can you hear it ringing?”

 

“Rey, breathe,” he reminds her, and she realizes that she hasn’t been.

 

There’s the other sound again, too, she realizes. The low metallic vibration. She turns her head to look around the captain’s quarters, and then she sees.

 

Then she understands.

 

The bulwarks of the ship are shaking, and hovering suspended in the air are random items from around the room, including a chair, a lamp, and their discarded clothes. Some smaller things, what look like nuts and bolts, fly around the space in frantic, haphazard paths, pinging against the metallic surfaces.

 

“ _Kriff_ ,” she lets loose.

 

“Breathe.”

 

She’s not sure she can; she’s not sure there’s any space left for air in her body with him inside.

 

“It’s… a lot,” she manages.

 

Ben nuzzles her sternum, leading with his nose, then brushing his lips over the sensitive skin. He works his way up her neck, passing over the necklace chain, and she tilts her head back to give him access.

 

“Doing so well, sweetheart.”

 

“Am I? Is my heart sweet? Is it? Ben,” and here she grips his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes, trusting him to hold her up, “Are you going to stay this time?”

 

“Rancors couldn’t drag me away,” he answers, serious. His expression is somewhere between nausea— it can’t be easy for him, to be like this and not move— and astonishment.

 

“Don’t tease, please, I need to hear—”

 

“I hear the bell, Rey,” he says simply. “This is it for me. This was always it.”

 

“Okay.” She sways towards him, and for a second more, they stay how they are, sharing the same breath, adjusting to the feel of each other.

 

Then Rey plants her hand behind her, on his calf, and begins to move.

 

It goes quickly after that. She rides him, rolling her hips, eyes on his, leaning in to steal a kiss here and there when the urge overpowers her. When she begins to tire, sweat rolling down her back, beading across his brow, he picks up the slack; he wraps her up in a hug like a sand bear, leans back against the pillows, and thrusts up into her, gently at first, and then with gathering force, hips pistoning at a relentless pace.

 

A minute, maybe two. He whines, plaintive, one hand wandering down to make a haphazard pass at her clit again. Her cunt yields to him a delicate flutter, and she presses her cheek to his.

 

“Let go, Ben,” she tells him.

 

Was he waiting for those words? He’d very valiantly put her own pleasure first, she thinks, and maybe even now, he is trying to drive one more climax out of her. But Rey is sated, completely sated.

 

So she moans with him when she feels him swell and bury himself deep inside, his grip on her adamantine, clutching her close like a ragdoll, and then moans again when she feels the warmth spread inside her.

 

“I love you,” she says again, all aching earnestness. She’d been wrong when she thought she could die happy earlier. _Now_ she can die happy.

 

His reply is muffled, almost lost to her skin. It is uttered in a low, rasping, rumble:

 

“Safe, and free, and loved.”

 

“Yes,” she coos, peppering kisses wherever she can reach. “You are. _We_ are.”

 

The items hovering all around the cabin drop to the deck, unnoticed.

 

 

. . .

 

 

There’s a jolt of momentary bewilderment, hours later, when she’s awoken from a mundane dream in which she’s been tasked to fix the flux capacitor connector of a ship shaped like a giant jogan fruit. Her eyes fly open to inky nothingness, the sound of rain pattering against the ship, the air thick with the scent of him and her, his massive form wrapped tightly around her, and his face nestled against her neck, steady puffs of breath fanning over the skin there.

 

A second later she realizes why she’s awake. Over the raindrops, there is a dull clanging sound coming from outside, like something is hammering on the hull of the _Falcon_. She hears Ben groan himself into wakefulness behind her as the noise continues.

 

Voice husky with sleep, he grits out, “Whoever that is, they’re getting a bellyful of plasma if they don’t stop.”

 

But the clanging does not abate, it gets louder. Not only is it impossible to ignore, but Rey senses that they will not be allowed to sleep until they go see what’s causing it. For a moment, she lays there, angry at the noise and whoever is making it, resentful of this well-earned peace being interrupted.

 

Don’t they deserve rest, and time alone? Haven’t they suffered enough?

 

When it becomes clear that the clanging will not cease, regardless of her vexation, Rey makes a sound that is both groan and sigh. She lifts the heavy arm draped over her waist, pausing to kiss the palm of his hand, then extracts herself from the sleeper. She stumbles around in the dark for a moment, blindly searching among the discarded clothes scattered around the deck. By the time she’s pulled something over her head, Ben has woken enough to activate the bedside lamp, at which point Rey looks down to see it’s his sweater she’s wearing.

 

Something about that sight seems to affect him. His eyes go wide, and his breaths shallow as he lays in the sleeper watching her hunt for her underwear. At last she gives up, settling for pulling his pants on, in the hopes that whoever or whatever it is, she can turn them away quickly.

 

Rey rubs the sleep from her eyes and lets out another irritated groan. She passes back to the sleeper, intent on collecting a kiss from Ben before she goes, but he’s already rising, and despite everything that has occurred in the last few hours, the sight of his naked body leaves her a little breathless, too.

 

Her big, solid man.

 

It’s Ben who collects a kiss from her, that smirk returning as he tugs on the hem of his sweater. “Looks good on you,” he says, gravelly, before retrieving another pair of trousers from the small closet.

 

Silently, they pad out into passageway in the direction of the ventral ramp. As Ben initiates the ramp opening sequence, he reaches for her, herding her behind him.

 

“Hey,” she grumbles, offended, but the look he gives her is so tender, so pleading, that she lays a forgiving kiss on his bare shoulder.

 

“ _Finally_!” shrieks a shrill woman’s voice, from the darkness, as the smell of ozone wafts over them.

 

Ben keys in a code at a nearby control panel, and at once, the underbelly of the ship is bathed in bright light. Gozetta is revealed to be standing there in her poncho, hair drenched, a massive piece of driftwood in her hands. The sand outside the ship's perimeter is dark and compacted, rainfall like a veil hanging over her edges.

 

“Have you two gone deaf? I’ve been calling for over an hour! Didn’t you hear me—”

 

The rest of her incensed diatribe is forgotten as she takes in their half-dressed state, the clothes Rey is wearing, so clearly not her own. As inconspicuously as possible, Rey takes a sniff of Ben, then herself. She winces; they reek of sex.

 

“I… oh,” says her sister.

 

“What is it, Goz?” she demands, sidling in front of Ben. “We were sleeping.”

 

“Hmph,” Gozetta snorts, as she tosses the driftwood aside so she can cock one hip and cross her arms. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”

 

Ben’s hand clamps onto her waist, and he tugs Rey back against him. Once his arms are wrapped around her, and she is thoroughly distracted, he speaks to Gozetta in a warning tone.

 

“You have ten seconds before I close this ramp.”

 

“I… I… you rude… you… you… moof… milker…”

 

This is intolerable. Ben’s body is solid and tempting against her back, and all she wants is to be in bed, snuggling. And maybe doing… other things with him.

 

“Gozetta!” she snaps. “Get to the point, _please_.”

 

“You don’t have to be so testy!” Gozetta blurts out, incensed. “I only came _all_ this way—because _you_ weren’t answering your comms—to tell you that Armitage Hux has been arrested by the Coruscant Security Force, and Pa along with him!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there's that. 😏 Some notes?
> 
> Where are the [Unknown Regions](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Unknown_Regions) and where is the [Tashtor sector](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tashtor_sector)?
> 
> Who's [Maz Kanata](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Maz_Kanata)?
> 
> What is a: [sand bear](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sand_bear), [snake](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Snake), [ferbil](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ferbil), and [rancor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rancor)?
> 
> What's a [sonic hammer](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_hammer) and what's a [contained energy axe](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Contained_energy_axe)?
> 
> Criming criminal syndicates who do crime: [Wandering Star](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wandering_Star), [Crimson Dawn](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Crimson_Dawn), and [Black Sun](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Sun).
> 
> Does the gffa have [birth control](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Birth_control)? [Yes!] What about [holopornography](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pornography)? [Also yes!]
> 
> While I _know_ I would be useless with a seven-string hallikset and [claw harp](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Claw_harp), I feel like maybe I could be halfway decent on the [kasta drums](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kasta_drum).
> 
> [Inspiration](https://www.etsy.com/listing/634571608/petrified-wood-gibeon-meteorite-ring?ref=shop_home_active_60&pro=1&frs=1) for Rose and Brixie's matching rings. Also, the petrified wood of course comes from the black spires, but what is [meteorite](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Meteorite) and what is [songsteel](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Songsteel)?
> 
> What's a [cumulonimbus cloud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_cloud)?
> 
> Wow, turns out when you write 20k words and ⅔ of it is porn, there aren't too many notes to include! 😂 Hope you enjoyed my take on The Letter™ and the scene that I fervently believe Jane would've given us had she not been constrained by the conventions of her time.
> 
> The thing that started this all: _“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope."_ Although I love that passage in the book, I feel like you really get the emotion of it best in film. Here's the [1995 version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSzac4mccA) and here is the [2007 version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPVlnLk6DzM). Both so, so good.
> 
>  Okay, that's all from me. Thank you for reading! 💚


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Glowing and lovely in sensibility and happiness, and more generally admired than she thought about or cared for, she had cheerful or forebearing feelings for every creature around her… and with Captain [Solo], some moments of communications continually occurring, and always the hope of more, and always the knowledge of his being there.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**42 ABY.**

 

After they’ve followed Gozetta back across the beach to the bungalow then barreled into the main room, breathless and drenched from the heavy rainfall despite sharing Ben’s umbrella, Rey retrieves two towels from a closet in the long corridor. Rubbing hers through her hair, she collapses onto a sofa in the main room. Ben hovers nearby, toweling himself off haphazardly. Once somewhat dried, he hesitates for a moment right in front of the cushion between Rey and the arm of the sofa, staring at it as if asking it permission. 

 

She smiles, reaches for his hand, and tugs him down next to her, curling into his side, like the inner swirl of a conch shell against the outer, two halves finally made whole again.

 

Poe watches all this with a bemused grin from the kitchen area, then snorts to himself and shakes his head before returning to the task of brewing a pot of caf.

 

And Gozetta seems to pay the whole scene no mind at all, instead busying herself with the setting up of her holoprojector at the dining table. Except, when she thinks Rey isn’t looking, she sends a curious, sidelong glance their way. Rey receives it with a smile, which causes her sister to whirl back towards the tabletop as though she’s just been issued a harsh reprimand.

 

“I figured you’d be calling soon enough,” growls the glowing blue projection of Verla’s face, not a minute later. She’s scowling at Gozetta, arms crossed.

 

It is at this very moment that Rey realizes that both her sister and brother-in-law are still in their pajamas. They’d been sleeping before they got the call, then. From who, she wonders? Poe looks like he’s already nurturing the beginnings of a hangover, and Gozetta doesn’t look much better. How long ago did they even leave Rose and Brixie’s celebration at the Great House?

 

“We just heard from our friend in the Senate,” Gozetta grumbles.

 

So it was Finn. Did Leia contact him? Rey peers up at Ben’s face, and finds it strained, a frown tugging his lips down.

 

(Just a few hours ago, those lips were on her. The thought makes her squeeze her legs together, and maybe she feels the slightest hint of shame that she’s remembering the feel of his body against her, the feel of moving together, coming on his tongue, during a time like this.)

 

She should feel worry, or maybe anger, for her father and Armitage… shouldn’t she?

 

When Ben notices her gaze on him, he somehow draws her closer into his side, until she’s nearly in his lap, lays a gentle kiss on her wet hair, and then rests his cheek atop her head. Rey feels nothing but contentment, and not a single qualm about that.

 

This is hers now. 

 

A wild thrill goes through her, for all that is yet to come. For the future she has chosen. It’s enough to make her shiver. Ben feels it and gives a low, soft grunt, then yanks the bantha wool blanket off the back of the sofa, wrapping it around them both.

 

Ergel’s fate has no bearing upon this, what she and Ben have. Rey decides right then and there, sitting on Gozetta’s sofa in Ben’s arms, that she does not have any sympathy left for him, especially if he’s been arrested for some illicit business transaction that transpired as a result of his association with Armitage and Rinnrivin.

 

“What senator friend?” asks Verla, suspicious.

 

“Never mind that,” Gozetta replies hastily. “What is going _on_ , Ver?”

 

“It’s all a bunch of bumblefluff.”

 

“ _What_ is?” Gozetta persists.

 

“Oh, the charges. Treason? Trafficking and trading of illegal munitions? Bribing of officials? I mean, Pa? Can you _imagine_ ? Don’t they _know_ who we’re descended from? Honestly, you’d think not a one of these morons has ever cracked open a history holo—”

 

On tip-toes, taking a circuitous route around the table so as not pass behind Gozetta and therefore appear in Verla’s field of vision, Poe delivers caf to Rey and Ben.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers as she takes her mug, to which he presses his finger against his lips and flicks his eyes towards the hologram, then back to Rey. He shakes his head.

 

Rey comprehends all too well; she has no more interest in speaking to Verla than he does.

 

And what she discovers, as Verla continues, is that she has no more sympathy left for her sister’s prideful mistakes, either. She’s paid for hers, hasn’t she? It is Verla’s turn to do the same.

 

“Ah, I see,” Gozetta says meekly, when Verla pauses her tirade to draw a breath. “Well, yes, I s’pose it might all be a misunderstanding…”

 

“‘Course it is,” Verla sniffs. “Pa’s trial will be on Coruscant, in the Ninth Hall of Justice. I haven’t a clue when it will begin, but I presume I’ll see you there?”

 

Gozetta blanches, a wild look of dismay flaring in her eyes. “I—I don’t know,” she stammers, “I must discuss, er, arrangements, that is… with the Damerons, I must… arrangements would have to be made for my children… and… and… the koyo farm! Why, the… er, planting season is upon us! And in my health, that is… what I mean is… I don’t…”

 

Verla’s scowl deepens.

 

“Gozetta, how can you talk like that at a time like this? This is a kriffing crisis, stop being so selfish.”

 

“I just don’t know—”

 

“You always _were_ a brat,” Verla jeers.

 

“I was _not_!”

 

“Whining about your own problems—typical.”

 

Rey meets Gozetta’s eye from across the room, and finds that Gozetta— usually so priggishly self-righteous, an adamant and unabashed defender of her own interests, her own virtues— is wilting in the face of their elder sister’s derision. She looks to be on the brink of tears.

 

“ _Hang up_ ,” Rey mouths at her.

 

“Verla,” Gozetta hedges, glancing between her sisters, “You can’t just—”

 

“Can’t _what_?” comes Verla’s barked reply.

 

“Please, I’ll come to Coruscant, only I—”

 

“Of _course_ you will, we’re your family.”

 

Gozetta’s eyes, wide and worried, slide over to Rey again.

 

“ _Hang up_ ,” she mouths again, with a shake of her head.

 

Gozetta makes a helpless noise as Verla continues on, heedless of her distress. She is working herself up into a pique, holoprojected spittle flying as she rails against Gozetta’s shortcomings, and Ben’s grip on Rey’s hip tightens, as though in defensive preparation lest Verla step out from the holoprojection and into the room. Rey leans forward to get a better view of the hologram, and that is when she spies it: Verla is crying, truly crying, great bitter tears. No, not just tears, not just a simple crying jag… she is practically _bawling_.

 

Of all the things she’d expected to break through that cool, hard shell of Verla’s, Rey had never imagined it would be this. Ergel’s been in trouble before, after all. Long before he came back to Jakku, probably. _But never like this_ , her conscience points out. For a moment, she pities her older sister. She really does. But Verla told her she was not welcome back and Rey took those words to heart; she has no intention of swooping in to help Verla now. Not even for this. 

 

Everyone in the room has been rendered speechless by Verla’s histrionics. Rey meets Poe’s eyes, but he simply shrugs. The strained expression on Ben’s face conveys the same apathy. Rey returns to Poe, shooting him a pointed look then jerking her head in Gozetta’s direction. She’s able to catch it: the exact moment he tucks his chin in a resolved nod and drags in a deep breath, bracing himself for the encounter.

 

Ben gives her hand a squeeze and she squeezes it back, but she keeps an eye on Poe as he rises from the sofa and passes across the room to position himself behind Gozetta’s chair. Bending at the waist, he meets Verla’s holoprojected eyes.

 

“Hello, Verla,” he says calmly, interrupting her mid-curse. If Verla is taken aback to realize that her meltdown has been witnessed by more than just Gozetta, she makes no sign of it, though she does fall momentarily quiet. “It’s late here,” Poe goes on to say, in the kind of appeasing tone a person uses with someone young and capricious. “We’re all tired, okay? Let’s continue this conversation in the morning.”

 

Verla’s reply is all venomous contempt, scathing and hissed. “Gozetta, will you tell this _brute_ that I am trying to have a conversation with my kin? And while you’re at it, why don’t you—”

 

It is evident that Poe is too tired, too hungover, too sick of Verla’s nonsense, to respond diplomatically, because he cuts her off there.

 

“You just don’t know how to play nice, do you?” he bellows, pointing an accusatory finger at Verla’s holoprojection. “Listen up, laserbrain—I don’t _like_ you. Never have. And you don’t like me! And that’s all fi-i-i-ine and dandy. But if you talk to my _wife_ that way—your own sister, and you call _me_ the brute? You runt of a Kath hound— _ever_ again— _ever_ —and we’re gonna have a real big problem. Got it?” He doesn’t give her a chance to reply. “Now we’re hanging up, and you can get kriffed for all I care!”

 

Rey is just able to glimpse the utter stupefaction setting Verla’s features to stone, jaw hanging and eyes like saucers, before Poe leans forward and jabs at a switch on the holoprojector.

 

Just like that, she is gone.

 

The silence in the room is nearly deafening. It is interrupted only by Poe’s angered slurping of caf from his mug. Peeking back at Ben reveals the traces of a smile; Rey sends an elbow into his gut and he has the grace to look somewhat abashed of his amusement.

 

“Thank you,” sniffles Gozetta, at last. She blinks wetly up at Poe, her lower lip wobbling.

 

Rey smiles to herself, entirely at peace with the state of the world, as Poe leans down once more, his free hand clasping Gozetta's shoulder, and presses a soft kiss into the crown of her sodden hair.

 

“You’re welcome, Goz,” he says tenderly.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The sky behind the forest is beginning to lighten by the time they slip out from the bungalow’s beachside door, hand in hand, bare feet sinking into the damp sand with each step.

 

Ben looks as exhausted as Rey feels. They’ve spent the waning hours of the late night or early morning going round in circles with Gozetta and Poe— later joined by Finn and his bodyguard droid, Shara and Kes as well— all of them chewing over the scant information they have on the arrest. With Ben able to offer up the few things he’d gleaned from his fact-finding missions, and Finn throwing in the results of his own investigations into Hux’s less-than-legal business dealings on Batuu, Rey thinks she finally has a good understanding of the man.

 

Armitage Hux had been a menace as a boy. That is what the senator of Arkanis had related to Ben when they’d met. Power-hungry even then, in his academy days, with a taste for subjugation which could safely be assumed to have been learned from his father. And there’d been rumors, after Brendol’s death, when he’d quietly requested and been granted a release from his position as Commandant so that he could assume control of Jinata Security. 

 

Rumors of secret financial backers greasing palms in order to make that release happen without the customary delay of bureaucracy, rumors of Brendol’s death at Armitage’s hands, rumors of dark Sith magic at play somehow. Nothing concrete, though.

 

Not until now.

 

Leia has gotten a hold of his bank accounts; that has been the killing blow for Armitage. At least, that’s what Finn had been able to tell them.

 

“I’m sorry,” Ben says to her in a low voice, a whisper against the waves, pulling her back to the present moment, “that I didn’t tell you at the ballet. About Hux.”

 

“You didn’t know the full extent of it.” She leans into his arm as they walk. “None of us did. I’m not sure we do even now.”

 

“Hm,” is all he says, a discontented moue tweaking his full lips. “I feel like begging your forgiveness anyway.”

 

“Oh, Ben.”

 

He halts. With her hand still grasped in his, he halts her too, then pulls her back into his waiting arms. In her ear, he murmurs:

 

“Forgive me, Rey?”

 

“I do,” she replies, raising up onto her toes. “Don’t worry, Ben. We’re going to be happy. You’ll see.”

 

He makes a soft snuffling noise, lets his nose graze the sensitive patch of skin beneath her ear. “Come sleep?”

 

Was it meant to be a question? She suspects not, at least not consciously. She _hopes_ not; for her, there is no question. He releases her hand to grasp at her hips, her bottom, to bring her closer, to encompass her body with his own.

 

“Yes, stars, yes,” she says.

 

And standing there, the soft suede light of dawn washing over them, Rey recalls other embraces, years ago on Jakku, when she used to think of time with him as something untouchable and perfect, something she must encase in amber within her heart, as a kind of protection and keepsake for when he would eventually leave her.

 

How desperate she was for even a scrap of happiness, how impossible the very concept of anything more than a scrap was to her. She whimpers. Softly, or so she thinks, until his hold on her tightens.

 

Will it be different now? Will the rest of their destiny, whatever that may be, steal time away from this, from just the two of them being together? Or will it be the reverse: _them_ stealing time from their destiny? Either way: will they have to fight for moments alone?

 

 _No_ , she resolves, as he groans, a deep, needy sound.

 

The winds whip her hair around them both, but she makes no move to restrain it. Makes no move at all except to go slack against Ben, trusting him to hold her weight.

 

He does.

 

No, no, no. They will have this, and as much of it as they want. Until they are full and sated on their happiness, and then even after; they’ll take as many extra helpings as they want. And when they’re good and ready, when they’ve rested and drank deeply from the cup of life and had each other in a hundred different ways and made a few years’ worth of new memories together… then, and only then, will they decide _together_ what they’ll share of themselves with anyone else.

 

“We’ll build a life,” she vows aloud. By the Chandrilan sunrise she vows this, and by the whoosh and shurr of the waves. By the clumped sand between her toes and the wind at her back. “Something just for us.”

 

“Mm.” She feels his hum in his chest, pressed against hers. Faint, part agreement, part sleepy longing.

 

Presumably the sun continues rising, the day grows warm, and all is bright and fresh and vernal, but they do not see any of that, for they return their tired bodies to the captain’s quarters of the _Falcon_ and lay down their wearied heads upon the same pillow, then tangle their spent limbs together in the dark. And there they find sleep, sweet quiet dreamless sleep, and peace, their chests rising and falling in deep slow steady breaths, synchronized like twin axial pistons of the same engine.

 

Rest. Quiet rest, simple rest.

 

Peace.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Mashra shows up two days later.

 

Just alights in a comically small starhopper on the beach— her bald, speckled head can be seen nearly brushing the transparisteel bonnet, even from a distance— not far from Gozetta and Poe’s bungalow, and then, after shutting the ship down, opens said bonnet and leaps from the cockpit without a moment’s hesitation.

 

All of them— Finn and Angmi and G3, Brixie and Rose, Shara and Kes, Poe and Gozetta, Ben and Rey, the children, the employees of the orchard— watch these proceedings from their picnic blankets, the late afternoon clambake forgotten in favor of this intriguing new development.

 

“Uh, hi?” Poe calls to her, as she storms across the sand. It is as much a question as it is a greeting.

 

“Good afternoon, Commander Dameron,” she sends back once she’s drawn near, then shifts her gaze towards Finn and offers a respectful nod. “Senator.” Shara and Kes, also familiar faces to her, are presented the same level of formal greeting.

 

“Hello, Mashra.” Finn returns the nod, though his dark brow is pinched with puzzlement. “Everything okay with Bresnon?”

 

“Bres—? Oh, yes. My cousin’s fine. Back on Abednedo at the moment, taking some meetings. No, I’m actually here…”

 

“Mashra’s an old friend of our family,” Gozetta cuts across her, and if Rey was worried that her younger sister would show Mashra the old familial haughtiness that colored earlier transactions, that worry is quickly quelled. “Would you like to join us? Have a glass of koyo wine, some roasted basalt clams? It’s the peak of the season for them.”

 

“A very generous offer, Gozetta, and one that would make your mother proud.” Mashra's snout bobs up and down approvingly, eyes lightening with memories for a moment, but instead of joining them, she grows somber once more. “Alas. Another time, perhaps. Right now I am here to speak with Rey.”

 

The Abednedo's protruding eyes scan across the scene and catch on the sight of Rey, comfortably situated between Ben’s outstretched legs, both of them seated on a blanket with Finn.

 

“Is this an emergency?” Brixie pipes up, lighthearted and teasing. “Because we’re kind of having a good time here? So if it’s no-o-o-t an e _mer_ gency…”

 

“It is.” Mashra’s reply is curt, almost snapped. “Rey? A word?” A beat passes. “ _Privately_?”

 

With a sigh, Rey uses Ben’s bracketing legs to push herself to a standing position, then turns and offers a hand to him. He smiles, takes it, and rises as well.

 

Mashra frowns. “No, priv—”

 

“Anything you need to say to me, you can say to him,” Rey brushes her off, a final word on the matter, Ben’s hand still tightly clasped in her own.

 

It’s apparent in the Abednedo’s pursed lips, in her defensive posture, in her crossed arms, that this displeases her greatly. But Rey does not budge an inch, and all the picnic-goers are watching, so Mashra turns on her heel and sets off across the beach, seemingly on the presumption that Rey and Ben will follow.

 

They do.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“I am well aware that you have been unhappy with me lately,” she starts, eyeing Rey with trepidation, once they are out of hearing range of the others. She wrings her hands as she speaks. “And with Ergel. I’ve come to eat vworkka, child, and I assure you, I myself am sincerely displeased with your father. The entire _idea_ of him going to Bastatha was to dig himself _out_ of trouble, not burrow deeper _in_.”

 

She breaks off, dragging in a shuddering breath, then continues before Rey can respond.

 

“Still. Verla called me in a fit the other day, distraught over his legal woes, and… I was hoping I could convince you of the seriousness of his alleged crimes. And his trial. And how having his daughters there to support him would look, to the public—”

 

“I don’t need convincing,” Rey interrupts, gripping Ben’s hand so tightly she wonders for a fleeting second if she might be hurting him. A glance back reveals a pained grimace; when he notices her observation, his expression smooths. She relaxes her grip and turns to Mashra. “I’m well aware how serious they are.”

 

“Then you’ll come to Coruscant?”

 

Rey shakes her head. “I will not. And neither will Gozetta.”

 

“Your father—” Mashra tries, blinking in disbelief, but Rey once again cuts her off at the pass.

 

“Barely deserves the title. He did very little to actually father me. _You_ are more my father than he is.”

 

Mashra’s mouth snaps shut. Rey can practically feel Ben’s righteous indignation on her behalf, emanating from over her right shoulder. Mashra must feel it too; she raises her bulbous eyes over Rey’s head for a tense moment, staring at him. Then they dart back to Rey.

 

“So. You reunited at the ballet, then?”

 

“Something like that,” he seethes. His eyes are narrowed and he’s scowling at the Abednedo, like a defensive, cornered pole-snake but angrier, somehow. Meaner. More poised to strike.

 

“You certainly have made a statement, haven’t you?” Mashra grouses.

 

Rey replies for him. “I believe we have.” She’s uncertain if Mashra is referencing their reunion and the last few days— which have been filled with public displays of affection— or Rey and Gozetta’s subdued non-response to the announcement of Ergel’s arrest. Frankly, she doesn’t care. Not content to leave it there, she adds, “But… I’ve been thinking about the past. You were right before—I _have_ been very angry with you lately, whenever I considered everything that’s happened. Whenever I recalled the counsel you gave me.”

 

“I was only trying to—”

 

“I know what you were trying to do. And you were as good as a parent to me, so I took what you said to heart. I don’t think…” she peers up at Ben when he lays a heavy hand on her waist, a supportive weight that is neither restrictive nor binding. Just holding her, keeping her steady. “I can’t fault myself for wanting to be with my family, even if it did cost me eight years with the man I love,” she tells him, before whirling on Mashra. “But how you advised me, using my fear, using my loyalty… it was wrong of you.”

 

“Agreed,” Ben rumbles menacingly.

 

Mashra huffs. “I see.”

 

“I don’t think I’d do the same to someone who looked up to me,” Rey says.

 

To that, Mashra has no response.

 

Now she turns to Ben again. “But if I _had_ gone with you, or let you stay… maybe we wouldn’t have traveled the right path, the one that’s led us here. That’s possible too, isn’t it? Would the New Republic have found its way to victory without you at its helm?”

 

“Rey—”

 

“Would Gozetta and I have forged a friendship? Would I have been given the short time with my mother that I got? Those things are priceless to me. If we’re going to play the what-if game—and I’m not saying we should—we’ve got to do it completely, from all angles.”

 

“A strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion,” Mashra throws in.

 

“ _Just_ a woman’s?” is Rey’s arch response, her eyes still on Ben.

 

“A person’s,” she amends. “Any person’s. Mine included. I have done what I thought was my duty, to you and your family.”

 

Ben’s scowl turns appraising; his eyes are still narrowed, but his brows draw together in contemplation.

 

“I made my own mistakes, too,” he says, directing the thought at Rey in a lowered voice. She suspects that Mashra can hear anyway, though she half-turns as if to give them a moment of privacy. “Not returning—eight years ago, or six, when I’d heard from Dameron—Terena—that your family had come back for you…”

 

“Not for me,” Rey corrects him quietly, sadly. From the corner of her eye, she sees Mashra wince at the admission. “They came back, but not for me.”

 

“Would you have taken me back, then? Six years ago?”

 

“In a heartbeat,” she answers.

 

“Pride,” he grits out, bowing his head. “Stupid, useless pride.”

 

“We’ve both been proud, Ben.”

 

He sighs. “You’re right, I had my own duty to fulfill—I can’t fully regret that.”

 

“You shouldn’t,” she assures him. “The lives you saved, the people you brought home safely. The war you helped to end.”

 

Mashra clears her throat. “All these years, I have misjudged Ergel, it seems.” The confession is tinged with disillusion. “And more recently, Armitage.” She hesitates. “And… you, Captain Solo.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

That’s all he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the galaxy. Rey is inclined to agree.

 

“But… he is your _father_ , Rey,” Mashra continues, one last attempt. “The reasonable thing to do would be—”

 

Rey raises a hand to silence her. “Are you really so determined to make the same mistake all over again?”

 

The Abednedo blinks once, twice, her bulbous eyes flicking between the two of them. She sighs. “You are finished with Ergel then, I suppose.”

 

She could crow from the treetops, for all the victory she feels in Mashra’s defeated tone. “I think I am.”

 

“And Verla too?”

 

“Her, too,” she replies.

 

“You will at _least_ keep watch over Gozetta,” Mashra persists, although there is an uncertain wobble in her voice that renders it more question than declaration.

 

Rey nods. “I’d protect her with my life.”

 

“Well. Well then. In some small measure, I have succeeded in doing my service—my duty—to your late mother.”

 

“You’ve done enough,” Rey allows. “Both good and evil.”

 

A flash of hurt appears across Mashra’s stoic features and then is gone, buried away. “The same could be said of any of us, couldn’t it?”

 

“Yeah,” Ben sighs. The very word is an act of kindness, of forgiveness. “It could.”

 

 

. . . 

 

 

“We haven’t had a moment alone to really talk.”

 

That is how Rey opens with Gozetta some time later, after Mashra has pulled Gozetta aside for her own private chat, then bundled back into her starhopper and disappeared into the ether, and Rey and Ben have wandered back to the clambake, lips swollen and fingers entwined.

 

Gozetta looks up from her datapad in alarm, perhaps not having heard her approach, lost as she seems in her studies. “About what?”

 

The others have drifted down to the surf’s edge; the day is fine, balmy under Chandrila’s brilliant sun, not a cloud in sight, and only Gozetta remains behind on the beach. Ben’s eyes flit between them for a moment before he brushes a kiss against Rey’s temple and turns in the direction of the water, giving them their space.

 

She loves him as much for that as she does for every other lovable thing about him.

 

“How are you feeling about all this? With… Ergel?” she clarifies, lowering herself onto the large piece of driftwood her sister has claimed for a perch.

 

Gozetta looks to the sea, then shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know.”

 

Rey scoots closer, close enough that their shoulders are touching. She shoves up against Gozetta gently.

 

“I think it’s alright to be angry or disappointed. Or to feel nothing at all.”

 

“Mashra scolded me rather unkindly for not wanting to go to the trial. And now I don’t know _how_ to feel.”

 

“She’s ridiculous. You don’t have to go.”

 

“Hmph.”

 

A pensive breath, pulled in through her nose. “I know why _I’m_ not—you can probably imagine my reasons. But will you tell me why you don’t want to go?”

 

“Perhaps I’m feeling poorly!” Gozetta cries. “Very poorly. You know how my health is.”

 

“Goz,” she says, tenderhearted censure in her tone.

 

Gozetta’s shoulder twitches, as if to shirk the truth. She blurts out, “Half the things he brags about doing in the Coruscant Security Force or for the Empire are lies. Did you know that?”

 

She glares at Rey in challenge, but Rey raises her hands in immediate surrender, absent contradiction or correction, so Gozetta nods and continues:

 

“Most of it is a matter of public record—easy to research. It’s as much bantha shit as everything else about old Ergel. He was never at the battle of Endor, nor was he in any way involved with the Iron Blockade. There’s not a single document connecting us with _any_ Contispex, first or otherwise, even if that _were_ something to be proud of. But I suppose we both know that none of those things would _actually_ be prideworthy even if they were true.”

 

“Ah.” 

 

The revelation comes as no surprise to Rey. She has so little investment in Ergel’s fate that the faint sound is all she can muster up for him. The bitterness in her younger sister’s voice, however; that is something of a surprise to her.

 

“Well _I_ find it rather difficult to sympathize with a man like that! A liar? A man who left his five-year-old daughter behind on a… a… a horrid desert planet, to work for some Crolute miser? Who meanwhile treated his wife and children the way he did, like beasts of burden and deadweight?”

 

Rey feels her composure wobble, the threat of tears imminent, but still she says nothing. Gozetta is spitting plasma now, and she is not finished.

 

“He is quite thoroughly a scoundrel, personally and professionally, morally and ethically. Why should he have the support of his family when he has done the bare minimum to support _us_ in return? _You_ particularly?”

 

“You don’t need to hate him on my behalf,” Rey demurs. 

 

It barely makes a dent in the salvo of Gozetta’s ire; her expression contorts to one of long-held resentment. “Do you think that growing up _with_ him was any more pleasant than growing up _absent_ him?”

 

When she glances up at the question's sharp edge, Rey can tell her sister is making her own valiant effort not to cry. 

 

“Do you truly think he was a kind father, a good father?” Gozetta adds. “That he prepared us for life in any meaningful way? That _my_ life has been easy?”

 

Rey ducks her head in the face of that anger, acknowledging it with her silence.

 

At length, Gozetta resumes her explanation, in a steadier, calmer cadence. “No, I shouldn’t like to be there for him, I don’t think.”

 

“Me neither,” she manages.

 

“Then it’s decided,” declares Gozetta with a decisive nod. “We’re not going, no matter what old Mashra says.”

 

“Yes. Decided.” Rey forces a tight smile, and Gozetta sends back one of equal strain.

 

“Good.” She barely gives the declaration a moment to settle before pivoting. “Well now that _that’s_ settled and I’ve finally separated you from your ninety-kilo barnacle…”

 

There’s nothing forced about the bark of laughter that elicits from Rey; she throws her head back in delight, cackling at the description. “We haven’t been _that_ bad, have we?”

 

“No,” says Gozetta tartly, “You’re worse. Barnacles at least have the decency to hide their deeds from view with carapace and shells. I _saw_ what you two were up to in the woods the other day. It’s a good thing I didn’t have Little Poe and Weir with me!”

 

Warmth spreads across her cheeks like a wildfire. “Well, now that you’ve got me alone…” she prompts, redirecting Gozetta back to her point.

 

She sobers. “Is… all well? With… well, you know, everything that’s happened?”

 

“It is. Really,” she assures her. They share another smile, a looser, more genuine one.

 

“I cannot help but think that _I’m_ to be thanked in all this, you know,” says Gozetta.

 

“Oh, really?” she laughs, again. “And why is that?”

 

“Well if my health hadn’t been so poor last autumn and I had not been suffering so greatly, perhaps I wouldn’t have been able to convince you to come to Chandrila! And then how would you and your Captain have been reunited, hmm? Especially since you two were lying your fool heads off half the time—why, you might never have seen hide nor hair of one another!”

 

Still chuckling, Rey concedes, “I suppose you’re right.”

 

“I am.”

 

They lapse into a peaceful lull for a few minutes, watching side-by-side as the Silver Sea lives up to its name, each rolling wave as shimmering and argent as the one before it, their friends and family dipping under then resurfacing. Finally, Gozetta pipes up once more.

 

“I wager I should’ve at least told Mashra to give Pa my best,” she says, a halfhearted stab at propriety.

 

Rey frowns at her and Gozetta frowns too, as if she herself is confused by her own words, or perhaps recognizing the internal duel between the impulse that drove her to say them and the desire to vanquish that impulse.

 

“Actually, I’m glad I didn’t,” she corrects. “I… don’t wish him my best. He doesn’t deserve that.”

 

“No,” agrees Rey in a hushed tone, resting her head on her sister’s shoulder. “He does not.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“The highlight of Fête Week is _always_ the Galactic Fair,” a much cheerier Gozetta calls back breathlessly to them, a few days later. 

 

They are making their way along Hanna City’s crowded Glitannai Esplanade, the rolling sea to their right; excitement gives her face a dewy glow, though it could also be perspiration from the day’s heat. 

 

“Simply the  _best_ time to be in the city. Not that I have to explain any of this to _you_ , do I, Captain Solo?”

 

His smile is slight but Rey detects it right away; even if it is just the edges of his mouth, just a faint twitch. He nods.

 

“The parade happens late this afternoon,” he picks up for Gozetta, when she turns back to her boys, each of which is tugging at one of her hands in opposite directions, towards two different sweets-selling stands. “Hundreds of thousands come to see it. It starts by the sea and ends in the former Pliada di am Imperium, in the center of the city.” He pauses. “Han used to take me.”

 

“Maybe someday you’ll take your own youngling?” Shara suggests, from behind them. When Rey steals her own backwards glance at Shara, dressed in a chic sundress and floppy-brimmed harvest hat, the older woman winks.

 

In the throng up ahead, Rey can just make out Brixie’s tall figure and Rose’s shorter one beside her. They’ve run on hand-in-hand and chattering with delight; the two women have been looking forward to the parade all week, and had declared openly before they all left the Great House that they would be operating strategically in their hunt for the best viewing position. All those who could not keep up would have to find them afterwards, they’d said, and it’s clear that they meant it.

 

A second later, they disappear.

 

She hears Shara’s amused chuckle. “ _She’s_ always loved Fête Week, too. Most children do.”

 

It’s understandable. Rey cannot help the pang of bitterness she feels at never getting to be a child on Chandrila. All around them are hundreds of temporary stands and massive striped pavilions, operated by not just Chandrilan Humans and Pantorans, but Jawa, Mon Calamari, Rodian, Twi’lek, and a thousand other peoples from a thousand other systems and sectors across the galaxy.

 

Toys, games, cutting-edge technology, foodstuffs both freshly prepared and preserved for later consumption, the latest model of transports buffed and shined and gleaming in the sun: all of it is on display for the attendants of the Galactic Fair. Everywhere she looks, dancers and musicians have created pockets in the crowds— who have drawn respectful circles around them and drop credit ingots into the buckets that are passed around when they finish their performances— and overhead, acrobats soar through the air from hovering pod to pod.

 

How dearly her young self would have loved this.

 

“Of course, I’d thought it would be Ben and _Brixie’s_ youngling he’d take,” Shara says more quietly, this time from beside Rey. With a start, she realizes she’s lost track of Ben, but she locates him just a few paces away, admiring the latest model of Nubian yacht beside Finn, Angmi and G3, Gozetta and the boys, and the Dameron men.

 

Rey steals a wary sideways peek at Shara’s face. The woman smiles kindly.

 

“I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable! Only—I wanted to tell you that I’m happy for you, Rey. When you first came to us, you looked…” Shara swallows, considering her words. “Tired. Tired in a way I understood, but in a way I felt you were too young for. It didn’t seem right.”

 

“I was.” Even under her own floppy harvest hat, Rey must squint to look at the silver ship the men are admiring. “Tired.”

 

“I’m very glad everything sorted itself out,” says Shara. “All for the best, I think. Captain Solo is a fine man, a good man. But I haven’t seen Brixie happy the way she is now, not in a long time. Not since…” she shakes her head, backtracking, “She’s happy and healthy, and she adores her fiancée. That’s all I could ask for.”

 

Rey nods.

 

“I’d hope the same for you, Rey. Captain Solo, as it turned out, wasn’t quite what my daughter was looking for. But maybe he is for you?”

 

“He is.” 

 

Her voice sounds confident to her own ears as she watches his tall, burly figure rejoin the group, seemingly parting the crowds as he moves through them. 

 

“He always has been,” she whispers.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Hey,” Ben murmurs in her ear, as the skylanes and the esplanade begin to clear, in preparation for the parade and fireworks. “You really want to see this?”

 

She gives an indifferent shrug. “Have you got a better idea?”

 

At that, Ben flashes a brief but dazzling smile then puts his fingers to his lips. He turns and heads back through the winding alleys of old Hannatown, tugging her along with him. When they emerge, somehow, they are in the diplomatic residency neighborhood. He bids her to wait while he disappears into a gated apartment complex— the same one Rey came to when she first visited Mashra on Chandrila— and then he emerges a few minutes later, seated atop an old speeder bike, a cherry-red Balmorra cruiser.

 

“Jump on.” 

 

He hands her a helmet identical to his own, so she tips the harvest hat back, letting it hang by its strap, and dons it.

 

The past few days have been full of moments like this, where she is reminded of all the reasons she loves him. In this particular moment, it is their shared love of going _fast_ , the adrenaline of a zipping speeder or a diving starfighter, that sets her heart aflutter. They are both like children in their enthusiasm for this, the wild delight of speed.

 

Laughing, carefree and happy, so happy, she climbs onto the seat then huddles close to him, wrapping her arms around his broad torso and hiding her face between his shoulder blades, nuzzling his plain black shirt, breathing in the smell of him.

 

His lungs expand and contract quickly at that. He sends back a heated look. She smiles at him, a smile full of promise and offered temptation, to which he nods. Then he kick-starts the repulsorlift drive unit. It gives a hiccuping growl and with that, they are accelerating, propelled forward along the streets of Hanna City, out towards the forest, at a reckless speed.

 

Utterly content, Rey makes a sound against his shoulder, something between a purr and a happy moan.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Not a soul is to be found when Ben finally brings the speeder to a halt at the edge of the Damerons’ orchard. Everyone, it seems, has been given the day off for the festivities.

 

 _Maybe_ , she thinks, as he jumps off the speeder and turns to offer his hand in assistance, _that is exactly what he’s planned for._  

 

Maybe that thought sends up another shivery thrill within her.

 

Hands clasped, fingers interlaced, he leads her up one of the orchard’s many lanes. The late afternoon sun beats down on them; the air is heavy with heat, the perfumed scent of the flowering koyo trees, the silence of the empty property offset by the chirping of bulabirds, the buzzing of Yavinian tree-ticks and bees, and their own footfalls in the rich soil.

 

Her brow and back are already damp with sweat by the time they emerge from the other side of the orchard out onto a shady stretch of full green grass growing beneath the uneti tree.

 

The tree.

 

She gapes at it, hardly believing her eyes.

 

But this is the way of it on living planets, isn’t it? Things _do_ change, there _are_ cycles. Life leaves and then returns. The laws of Jakku are not universal. And the uneti tree is no longer the spindly, grey-faced giant it was the last time she was here.

 

It is in full, resplendent bloom. Just like the dreams. Its leafy branches are overburdened by satiny blossoms, each one a perfect cup of gold-edged pink petals housing long crimson stems within. They sway serenely in a non-existent breeze. It hums gently, or so she thinks.

 

“Like the dreams.”

 

The tree’s thrall is broken; she peers up at Ben to find him also contemplating the flowering tree, eyes shining in the dappled sunlight.

 

“Was it us—did we do this? Or is it just the way of things?” she wonders.

 

He shrugs, then crouches down to pull off his boots and socks. Bemused, she watches him. Once he’s finished his task he gives a wiggle of his toes then narrows his eyes at her own shod feet.

 

“Foot,” he orders, kneeling and offering a thigh. Rey rests her toe upon it, allowing him to remove the boot and sock and after, their twins. When her feet are bare, she digs them down into the grass, down, down, down into the cool soil beneath.

 

Rising, Ben reaches for her hand. She is not expecting him to pull her into a lazy, swaying dance when she gives it to him, but he does; a slow, nearly static rhythm, matched to the fluctuation of the branches, just rocking from one foot to the other, one of his big hands holding hers and the other on her waist, moving her with him.

 

“Remember this?” he asks.

 

Of course she does. Bare feet, just like now, but hard grated metal deck beneath them, Han and Chewbacca ostensibly asleep elsewhere in the _Falcon_ , just the two of them dancing to a silent song only they could hear in the crew’s quarters. Young love; how bitter the memory is, how sweet.

 

Being under the tree isn’t quite like the dreams. The sun is shining, for one thing. It is not the rose-gold moonlight of that other world. Which was not even accurate, she’s realized; Chandrila’s moons are lavender and amber.

 

The color of those moons, it occurs to her as she peers up at the efflorescent canopy overhead, was exactly the same as the uneti tree’s blossoms. Pink and gold.

 

The edges of his eyes crinkle as he spins her out then brings her back in close with an extra twirl for good measure.

 

“What are you up to, Ben Solo?” she teases.

 

“Hm?” he hums, smirking. “Me?”

 

She grins, and he kisses the dimple that forms in her cheek.

 

If Rey were still afraid like she was at nineteen, if she were still hoarding memories of him, the texture of his hair and the smell of his skin and the rumbling sound he makes when she presses her body closer to his, she might think of this moment as perfect, and untouchable, and encased in amber for all time.

 

She might lock it away within her mind, in anticipation of its end.

 

Her vow from the other morning, sworn by all the elements of the world around them, comes back to her. _They will have this. As much of it as they want._ She swore by Ben’s world, his home.

 

To think of this dance as rare or extraordinary would be to categorize the moment as fleeting, perhaps a one-time-only event. But now Rey expects a lifetime of dances; to stockpile these sensations would be to reaffirm her fear of never experiencing them again, and that is not what she wants for her and Ben. It is not, she can feel, what he wants either.

 

So she gives herself over to joy and to pleasure and to love, and she does not carefully commit to memory each moment of this dance. She lets all of these things flow through her, and she flows too, a languid creature melting in her own fervor, her own lust.

 

Craning her neck, she seeks out his lips. 

 

The dance is forgotten. A new dance is begun.

 

 _You are not on Jakku anymore,_ she reminds herself. _Maybe some things do last forever._

 

“Balmgrass,” he says, as he tugs her down onto the soft carpet-like green, a welcome place to rest a while. She lays back, practically sinking down into it, and watches with lidded eyes as he lays a kiss to the tops of each of her thighs, then the jutted ridge of each hip pressing against her trousers, then her navel, sought out beneath her tunic, then up, up, up to her clothed breasts. 

 

“How many times have I had you,” he muses between kisses, “on this bed of balmgrass?”

 

Her reply is whispered, unable to tear her eyes away as he yanks his shirt over his head then reaches to help her out of hers. “A hundred. None at all.”

 

“We’ll have to fix that.” 

 

Divested of their shirts and her brasserie, he drinks her in and she does the same. There is no breeze in the still hot air, the sun reaches for them brazenly through the foliage. Yet her nipples pull taut and her flesh pebbles. It is his gaze that does this, that sets off this reaction. Rey tries to press her thighs together to relieve the ache that has begun between them, but Ben has settled himself there and blocks her way. She gives an indignant whine as she forces herself to focus on the last thing he said.

 

“I’m good at fixing things,” she huffs.

 

“I know,” is all he says, peering into her eyes. It’s all he _has_ to say.

 

When their clothes are gone— it doesn’t take much time as they’re working together with a shared goal in mind— he uses his fingers to open her up, get her warm and wet for him, though she needs little help in that regard; just rolling around in the grass together, kissing, Ben cradled between her thighs and rubbing against her just right, is enough to get her going.

 

In the sunlight, she has a better chance to observe the old wounds that litter his body, small burns and knicks mostly, though there’s a web-like gnarl of scar tissue on his right flank from what might have been a bowcaster’s plasma bolt. And of course, the fissure that cleaves his cheek. And on his bicep: another burn.

 

From the shootout with the Uthuthma.

 

“I remember this, too,” she gasps, running her fingertips along its ridged surface.

 

He sighs. “I thought…” he pauses, then corrects himself, “I _used_ to think it was all I’d ever have of you.”

 

This is not the right moment to cry; she doesn’t want to, she fights against the urge with all her might.

 

“Is this forever?” The question escapes from her lips without her permission.

 

His rocking against her stills. “Do you want it to be, Rey?”

 

The gravity of the question would pin her to the ground even if Ben weren’t already doing so.

 

Does she? Could she imagine a life without him, without this? She’s found her footing; she has friends. She could carve out a place for herself here on Chandrila or on Batuu or somewhere else, somewhere new and undiscovered. She could find work— she knows ships, she can fly, she can fix almost anything— and she could take herself out into the galaxy, and explore it, and be free.

 

She’d be free and safe. And she _would_ be loved.

 

But it would not be the love she wants. She would not have _her_ love, her one love.

 

She wants all that exploration and freedom and newness. And she wants Ben in the co-pilot seat beside her, in her bed warming and holding her, the first face she sees in the morning and the last one she sees at night.

 

Given an entire galaxy’s worth of options, there is only one that is absolutely non-negotiable for Rey.

 

Ben must be a part of all that is to pass from here on out.

 

“Yes,” she says, a shy smile tugging at her lips. “I do.”

 

“So it is.”

 

Then she giggles, because his attention has been stolen by the tight peaks of her nipples, puckered and calling to him, and hers by the feel of him, hard and hot and ready against her swollen sex. This is not a time for weighty conversations of forever or even of tomorrow.

 

This is a time for voluptuary joy: for Ben to inch his way inside her, whispering his loveliest compliments to her sweet cunt, wet and soft and tight just for _him_ , so perfect, so right; for Rey to nip playfully at the lobes of his big beautiful ears before he hits a spot inside that makes her keen and wail, he always sends her flying, he always finds _that_ spot; for a stolen afternoon in the downy grass, carefree and in love and reclaiming all their forgotten youthful hedonism.

 

The rest can wait.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Rose Tico and Brixie Dameron are married the day after Fête Week ends. It’s a quiet affair, despite Brixie’s earlier proclamations of wanting splendor and excess, with only Brixie’s family and a few of Rose’s cousins in attendance. 

 

And Rey and Ben and Finn, naturally. 

 

Although they are not aboard his former ship, Poe announces beforehand that his status as retired Commander means he can still officiate his little sister’s wedding, which he does with aplomb. Once the brides, dressed in lavender-tinted lace, stroll down arm-in-arm from the Great House to join the intimate group, he gives a funny, self-deprecating speech that has them all giggling.

 

The sun shines on the world, turning the air hazy with heat and pollen. Butterflies and bees flit around them during the ceremony; the distant whisper of the beachside forest is carried to them on an intermittent breeze. Hays Minor and Chandrila both have many unique and elaborate traditions when it comes to weddings but in the end, the women opt for something very simple: just a recitation of some promises they want to make to each other and a heartfelt kiss shared in front of everyone who loves them.

 

Afterwards, there is laughter and swimming and a feast prepared aside another massive bonfire, this one on the beach, and then dancing and music and more laughter and so much revelry, all of it continuing on and on until the dawn comes to shoo them off to bed.

 

It is a joyous day.

 

 

. . .

 

 

**_Misters Armitage Hux, Ergel of Jakku Found Guilty of Treason against the New Republic, Receive Life Sentences without Possibility of Parole_ **

 

Rey looks up from the datapad at the sound of Ben coughing; he has been snoring away beside her in the sleeper, but he seems to have awoken himself, perhaps with the sound of his somnolent chorus. Groggily, he props himself up on his elbow and leans over her shoulder, stealing a glimpse of the headline.

 

“Apparently the jury broke the record in the Ninth Hall of Justice for fastest verdict ever returned,” she states in a disaffected tone. “And the judge sentenced them on the spot.”

 

He lets out a long, low whistle then lays his big hand on her belly, warm and assuring. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I think I am. Or… I will be.”

 

It’s true. She recalls the distress she felt when Mashra informed her of Ergel’s financial troubles all those months ago on Jakku; comparatively, this is nothing. If that was a maelstrom, this is a breeze so weak it could not even send a ripple across the surface of a pond.

 

“First I need to take care of a couple things. And… I need your help,” she adds, with a hesitant glance at him.

 

Ben nods, utterly earnest. He sweeps a soft kiss across her bare shoulder. “Anything.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Gozetta’s heart-shaped face is pinched with worry, her brows drawn together, her lips pursed. “Don’t… don’t disappear off into the galaxy with him forever.”

 

They have made their farewells to everyone else already— seashells and honey exchanged between Brixie, Rose, and Rey, hugs and demands to return soon from the elder Damerons, a promise given by Finn that he’ll meet them at the designated destination, though he still doesn’t understand why— but Gozetta and Poe have escorted them to the beach, Gozetta determined to share every moment together right up until Rey leaves the atmosphere.

 

“We’ll come back,” Rey promises, and draws her sister into a hug. “With gifts, even. Do you trust that?”

 

Before she can go, she needs to know that Gozetta believes her; she needs to hear her sister say the words aloud.

 

A moment later the reply comes, muffled by Rey’s shoulder. “I do, moofmilker.”

 

With a sniffle, she nods. Once she has entrusted Gozetta to Poe’s care, who wraps an arm around her waist and rests his head against hers, Rey turns and boards the _Falcon_ ’s ventral ramp. Now it is her turn to wave to Gozetta from a departing ship. Gozetta returns the farewell glumly, and the two of them stand there waving at one another like a pair of fools until the ramp closes.

 

She sniffles a final time, then turns and heads towards the cockpit to join Ben, secure in the knowledge that Gozetta will be fine until she returns.

 

That she will be safe, and free, and loved.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“You know how to fly this thing, don’t you?”

 

“Hm?” she asks, surprised not by the question but by the memory it stirs, like a volt of startled steelpeckers swarming her: she is both in a dream and in the present moment, here in the cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon_ with Ben, each of them seated in one of the pilot’s seats. They’ve been hovering just outside of Chandrila’s orbit, running through some final computations.

 

Ben sends her a lopsided grin, a hint of inherited rakishness peeking through. “Thought you might want to.”

 

How the vision in her dream had wounded her, at the time, how stifled and trapped she’d felt when she’d awoken from that dream to find herself still deep under the surface of Bastatha. But the old agony is fading, day by day, and Rey feels herself to be mostly a creature borne of hope, of possibility, of joy.

 

“Buckle up, Solo,” she says, smirking. He rolls his eyes but reaches for his chair’s safety strap, tugging it across his body.

 

Taking the hyperdrive lever firmly in hand, she eases it forward and thrills at the swooping sensation that accompanies acceleration to lightspeed. He ticks a few switches as the stars begin to bleed into blue-white streaks around them.

 

And then, and then.

 

And then they are flying the _Falcon._ Together.

 

At last.

 

 

. . . 

 

 

Despite not having an astromech, Captain Ben Solo _is_ the son of Han Solo. If anyone can rig up the old freighterto navigate hyperspace on autopilot using just its three droid brains, it’s him.

 

So he does.

 

As a result, much of their journey is spent in bed.

 

But not all of it. They don’t want to limit themselves, after all; there is so much of the ship to consecrate. Over the ensuant journey, Rey is quite pleased to discover that they are more than up to the task of locating each and every spot where sex is feasible, and seeing out their mission with vigor.

 

 

. . .

 

 

For example: they end up on the deck of the captain’s quarters closet, somehow.

 

Her palms and knees burn from friction against the carpeting; through their bond, she can feel how his are chafing too, but he shows no sign of caring nor slowing. The sound of his hips slapping against her buttocks, the obscenely wet euphony of their joining, his low, bestial grunts; all of it drives her just as wild as the feeling of him inside— so full, always so _full_ of him, teetering so close to pain but no, just this side of it and still lamenting every time he withdraws— and his smooth long thrusts, purposeful, like this is a position they have long since mastered.

 

In a sense, it is.

 

But this is the first time that his real torso is plastered, wet with perspiration, against her real back, and the first time in this position that his real hand sneaks over the tensed muscles of her real abdomen to dip between her legs, strumming her real clitoris in accompaniment with the rolling thrusts of his real hips, all of it so real, so frenzied and so good and just on the verge of _too_ real, too much… 

 

Rey gives a wanton cry; her elbows buckle as her orgasm takes hold. Ben’s arm is there to catch her, fingers splayed across her sternum as he pulls her up against him. What beautiful filth he spews in her ear as he fucks her right through the aftershocks, onto the next climax, and then the one after that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And later: Rey is folded up like a pepper pretzel, eyes squeezed shut at the feeling of his cock nudging at her, begging for admission. She is balanced precariously on the edge of the cockpit console, one knee pressed against her breasts and one calf thrown over Ben’s shoulder. She hardly knows how they got here; have they just slinked their way across the ship, too lost in each other to notice the change in locale or the hours passing? Was there a rest in there, filled with coy flirtation, some light-hearted teasing, water drank, a shower shared, a meal prepared and left half-eaten somewhere? 

 

There might have been, but right now there is only this.

 

Only Ben pushing forward, one steady movement done with ease because she is slick and lax and ready for him. Only his pleasure and hers making the blood in her ears pound, making her mewl out a weak, warbling sound. She reaches for his scarred cheek, using the feeling of his fevered, gnarled flesh to ground her. Then she opens her eyes to see him watching her.

 

“Rey,” he gasps, and leans down just long enough to press his lips to hers as he pulls back, then drives himself in deeper. 

 

“Hnnff—” She sort of huffs a giggle into his mouth, and in return he smiles wolfishly. 

 

“Do that again,” she demands.

 

“This?”

 

Rising, one hand planted on the console behind her, he begins to move.

 

 

. . .

 

 

And at some point: they are in the circuitry bay, Rey is on her knees, Ben’s trousers tugged down just enough for her to get at what she wants, what he wants.

 

What they _need_.

 

When their eyes meet, are they both remembering the last time she knelt like this for him, all those years ago inside the _Ravager_?

 

Maybe.

 

At first.

 

But then a new memory is being made, and there isn’t room for the old ones. Not when she nuzzles the silken skin of his hard cock, not when she hums her delight at its twitching, weeping tip, not when she pulls the head into her mouth and hollows out her cheeks, sucking on him, drawing a desperate groan from him. Not when she swallows him down.

 

Because she loves this too much to let the pain of their history color the experience. Helpless, throaty noises. That’s what he gives her when she glances up through her lashes, her smile as teasing as it can be with his cock buried in her throat; she loves that, too.

 

Loves it when he loses control and comes in her mouth, loves when his pleasure rips through her like its her own, like it belongs to her because it _does—_ it always has and it always will— loves the gauzy smeared blur of their minds and sensations, loves _him_.

 

She loves him so much.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Somewhere in between all this, they doze in the captain’s quarters sleeper, utterly exhausted and replete.

 

Rey burrows deeper into the bedding, trying to make a cocoon to protect herself from the ship’s cool climate-controlled air, and in response, Ben tugs her back, closer to him, until her bottom rests against his groin and they are flush from her shoulders to the heels of her feet. He is so warm; her own private heat source, her personal sun.

 

It is then that she remembers Han’s teasing remark, made a lifetime ago, about Ben’s conception on this ship.

 

Before she can even raise the question, he grumbles, “The bedding is new.”

 

Their connection has been growing stronger in this way; it’s not that she can hear his thoughts word for word, nor he hers, but she’s been picking up on his emotions more acutely, both through the Force and her own observations, and it seems that more and more, he is able— just as she is— to intuit where her line of thinking has wandered.

 

“Well that’s a relief,” she drawls, then shivers.

 

“Cold, sweetheart?”

 

“Always.”

 

“Better warm you up,” he replies in a mumble, already rolling her onto her back, already shooting her a wicked grin before he disappears beneath the bedding, already prying her legs apart, already making a quest of her cunt with his tongue and his lips.

 

He licks at her. She buries her finger in his silky, thick hair and holds on tight as he licks at her until she comes, then keeps licking and sucking and devouring, until she comes again. And a third time, at which point her legs begin kicking at him of their own volition and she must beg him to ease off.

 

The massive lump of his figure, obscured to her by sheets and a heavy quilt, goes still. For a minute or two, until she’s calmed and her quivering has quieted and she’s able to lay her legs over his shoulders once more. Tempting him with her messy sex, hoping he’ll lean forward again and— 

 

He does.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Finn meets them exactly where Rey asked him to: in the secondary docking bay cavern, kilometers beneath the surface of Bastatha.

 

He has not come alone; besides his usual accompaniment of Angmi and G3, he is joined by a lanky young Human man with dark hair and a Mirialan, whose lilac brow is decorated with diamond-shaped turquoise tattoos, just visible within the bulbous helmet of her yellow mimetic envirosuit.

 

From across the deck, Finn gives a bemused wave to the couple, his movement stiff inside his own bulky envirosuit.

 

“Go say hello?” Rey bids Ben. “I’m just going to find a mechanic, get _Nightbloomer_ brought up.”

 

He braces her by the shoulders, peering down at her through his helmet and hers. “You’re _sure_ you want to do this? _Nightbloomer_ is… yours. It was… always supposed to be for you.” He says this slowly, like he’s only now realizing the truth in his words as he speaks them.

 

“We belong on the _Falcon_ ,” she replies. “Don’t we?”

 

His nod is rendered almost imperceptible through the helmet.

 

“Shouldn’t _Nightbloomer_ be put to good use, then? A yacht like that shouldn’t just sit around waiting for action. She’s a beauty, and she deserves to be flown,” she argues, not for the first time.

 

“She is, and she does.”

 

Again he nods, understanding what she hasn’t said as much as what she has, then turns towards Finn’s group. After a quick exchange with the nearest docking bay mechanic, she too makes her way over to the cluster of envirosuited people.

 

“Rey!”

 

Finn pulls Rey into an awkward hug— the suits turn embracing into a strenuous task— then steps back, gesturing to the two strangers.

 

“You already know Angmi and Gee-Three.” Rey waves at them; Angmi nods back, her dissatisfaction with her own suit evident in her black-lipped frown, while G3 simply looms, impassive as ever. Finn scoffs at the droid then turns to the strangers. “This is Kazuda Xiono,” he places his hand on the lanky man’s shoulder before gesturing to the Mirialan, “and his partner, Synara San.”

 

“Pleasure,” Rey says, shaking their hands in turn. Kazuda, she cannot help but notice, sticks close to Finn in a way that reminds her of Ben trailing her around Jakku, or Brixie peppering Rose with questions about fathiers. Moreover, he wears a dopey grin on his face as he continuously steals glances at Finn when he thinks the senator isn’t looking. 

 

But Rey is looking. And Rey notices.

 

“Kaz’s father is the senator of Hosnian Prime. He’s looking to follow him into politics,” Finn explains to them. “He’s my—apprentice and assistant, I guess you’d say.”

 

“The mentee has become the mentor,” Rey notes with pride.

 

“We are collaborating on a project,” Synara says, in a deep, Mirialan-accented voice. Up close, her beauty is even more immediate and breathtaking, despite the helmet. Her turquoise lips and irises match her tattoos, and her lilac complexion is flawless.

 

She cannot help but observe how Synara’s beautiful turquoise eyes also follow Finn around, closely. Hungrily?

 

This is none of her business. She should not be looking at them, should not be seeing this.

 

“What kind of project?” Ben inquires, shifting irritably in his suit.

 

“Former ‘trooper rehabilitation facility on Hosnian Prime,” answers Kazuda, earnestness ringing out in his squeaky voice. “It’s not right, what the First Order did—taking so many Humans from their families, brainwashing—”

 

Synara interrupts him with a hand on his arm. “I’m sure they understand, Kaz. Especially Captain Solo.”

 

“I do,” is his subdued response.

 

Finn pipes up. “We’re trying to get it opened by the end of the standard year, so taking that time to go to Chandrila has put us behind. Worth it, though. I needed to be there. Still… I’m ready to get back to work. We _need_ that resource for former ‘troopers—we needed it years ago.”

 

“Noble,” says Rey, sending Finn a secret smile.

 

He grins at her.

 

“I apologize for interrupting…” The annoyance in Angmi’s rasping voice is obvious even while it is obscured slightly by the helmet. “But as Finn mentioned, we’re on something of a schedule. A schedule on which we are _behind_. It falls to me to see that we make up for lost time. So… why are we here, exactly?”

 

Rey glances up at Ben. He nods, his lopsided grin dimpling one cheek. “All you, sweetheart.”

 

“Finn, I wanted to give you something,” she tells her friend. “A present.”

 

His eyes widen. “What? Rey, no—”

 

She holds up a hand, twisting around to look for the silvery hull of the X-type Nubian yacht. It is rising up from beneath the hangar, not far from where they stand. When it comes to rest, a plasti-shroud tent is raised around it by a docking bay worker. Then its ventral ramp lowers and 2BB-2 emerges from the tent, chirping merrily and rolling towards them.

 

“Ah, there he is,” says Ben. “Was wondering about you.”

 

2BB-2 replies in droidspeak, something about a ‘big adventure’, which gives Rey a chuckle. She spins back to Finn.

 

“ _Nightbloomer_ ,” she says simply. “Technically not mine to give, but Ben agrees you should have it.”

 

From beside her, Ben nods. “It _is_ hers… I agree, though.”

 

Finn gives an incredulous scoff. “Rey, I can’t take that.”

 

“Why not?” she demands.

 

“I’ve seen how those diplomatic shuttles fly,” Ben interjects, jerking his helmeted head towards Finn’s craft. “I’ve flown them—they’re garbage. Bulky, slow, and ugly.”

 

Angmi jumps in. “But regulation—”

 

“Leia will help you with that.” 

 

Ben smirks at Finn, whose eyes rove over the gleaming, spotless hull of the fully restored yacht. He has an expression of wonder on his face, like a boy who’s just been gifted a long-coveted toy.

 

“She’d agree with Rey,” Ben goes on. “A senator should have a fast transport. Something sleek.”

 

“Thank you,” Finn acquiesces at last, throwing his arms around Rey once more. “Thank you both.”

 

“A noble man deserves a noble ship,” she mutters, only for his ears.

 

He moves onto Ben, another embrace, still barely able to take his eyes off the yacht.

 

“Think you can fly this thing, Kaz?”

 

“Can I ever!” cries Kazuda, already taking off towards _Nightbloomer_. “Just wait, Finn! I’m gonna blow your socks off! Nice to meet you guys!”

 

Synara rolls her eyes at her partner’s enthusiasm, then turns and offers them a deep bow before following him into the ship. With a sigh, Angmi glances between the diplomatic shuttle and _Nightbloomer_.

 

“I suppose we’ll… hire someone to fly the shuttle back,” she says begrudgingly. “I’ll go make the arrangements.” A final nod in their direction and she’s off, headed for the docking bay’s control room.

 

Only G3 remains hovering behind his client, silent and emotionless.

 

“Kaz and Synara seem _nice_ ,” Rey says, not bothering to keep the insinuation from her voice. “Very attractive people.”

 

“Are they? I hadn’t noticed.”

 

“ _Finn_ ,” she wheedles.

 

He shrugs. “Kaz has become a good friend of mine.”

 

“And her?”

 

Finn’s gaze slips over to the shapely figure of the woman, free of her suit and studying the controls over Kaz’s shoulder in the cockpit. “Synara is a… good friend of Kaz’s.”

 

“Well that all sounds very… friendly.” She raises her eyebrows at him for good measure, and hears Ben snort behind her. “Like it could… I don’t know, be the start of something good.”

 

This is none of her business, she knows that. But _she_ needed a push, once. Maybe Finn does too.

 

“Rey.” His tone is chiding but he breaks into a wide smile anyway, and a moment later, huffs out a sheepish laugh. “I dunno. Maybe.”

 

“Maybe? Maybe is good. We can work with maybe,” she teases.

 

“Yeah,” Finn says, considering the couple in the cockpit. “Maybe we can.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“This should only take an hour, two at the most,” Rey tells Ben as they step into the ancient, rusted-out turbolift. She sends one last wave to Finn and his party before the doors shudder closed in front of them and the turbolift begins its lurching descent. At her feet, 2BB-2 gives a distressed series of beeps, voicing his displeasure at the ancient transport.

 

Ben’s eyes roll towards hers. “Friend or foe?”

 

It’s still a little jarring how he intuits her intentions like that, but Rey smiles and twists off her helmet. Ben does the same. She raises onto her toes and purses her lips until he cranes his neck and presses his own to hers— a gentle kiss that contains the possibility of becoming heated.

 

Rey breaks away before it can. There will be time for that later.

 

“Friend,” she answers. “Definitely a friend.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Fortuitously, the consignment shop is open and the Miraluka woman is settled in her usual armchair, Teensy fast asleep on her lap. When they cross the threshold, 2BB-2 rolls in behind them, jabbering excitedly over all the old hardware, losing no time in throwing himself into an exploration of her wares. The Voorpak does not even bother to yap at any of them this time, just snuffles sleepily then resumes his snoring. The woman looks up as they approach, metal visor glinting dully, and chuckles.

 

“Wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” she teases. “But you know you’re always welcome here, young lady. And who is this you’ve brought for me to meet?”

 

“This is Captain Ben Solo,” she informs her.

 

The woman nods. “Ah, so this is your love—your Force bond.”

 

Ben’s brows furrow but he says nothing, eyes flitting between Rey and the seemingly sightless woman; Rey had given him the short version on the way down, but she understands his befuddlement. It’s disarming at first, to meet someone who sees so much. Rey can attest; after all, that’s how it was with Ben.

 

When the woman gestures to an armchair beside hers that was not there the last time Rey visited, Ben readily takes a seat.

 

“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” she says, then adds an arch, “At last.”

 

After a cursory search of the shop reveals no other surfaces to sit, Rey drops herself into Ben’s lap. He leans forward to plant a soft kiss on her shoulder.

 

“I can’t wait to hear all about the adventures you’ve had since we last met,” the woman continues. “But… first, I suspect, you want to discuss the darkness gathering in the Unknown Regions?”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Back on the _Millennium Falcon_ and drifting away from Bastatha on the freighter’s sublight engines, they lounge in the cockpit, reflecting on the last few hours.

 

“The darkness gathering,” Rey repeats contemplatively, with a shudder.

 

Ben does not speak, has barely spoken since the Miraluka brought it up, has left Rey to carry the brunt of the conversation with the woman. 2BB-2 trills fretfully from his position at the back of the cockpit, so Rey shoots him a tight smile.

 

“It’ll be alright,” she assures him. “We… we’ll figure this out. Won’t we?” The last part is directed at Ben, a desperate plea for him to come back to her from his melancholic trance.

 

He seems to shake himself free, though he’s still frowning. Their eyes meet and he raises a hand to her, inviting her back onto his lap. Readily, she accepts, curling up and sighing when his arms wrap around her.

 

At last, he speaks. “We need to talk to Luke and Mara.”

 

“That’s a good idea,” she says, hushed, and kisses the hollow of his throat.

 

He swallows; his embrace tightens.

 

She can taste his acrid fear on her own tongue.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Luke and Mara share a knowing look, once Rey has hailed them by holocall and she and Ben have, in turn, filled them in on what the Miraluka woman told them.

 

“Something in the Unknown Regions,” Luke echoes. “Mm. Yes… we’ve felt it.”

 

“Yes,” says Mara, her lilting Coruscanti accent, usually so refined, so smooth, now edgy and rough. “And now that it has begun, there’s no stopping it. But you two deserve… time.” Here Luke opens his mouth but she rests a hand on his shoulder, and he closes it without comment. She resumes her train of thought: “There may very well come a day when we will need your help. Something…  _something_ is coming.”

 

Ben clears his throat. “I’ve felt it, too,” he confesses. “I heard something… someone. In my mind.” Rey reels at this, and turns to look at his profile, but he does not meet her eye.

 

“Feeding your fear and your anger?” asks Luke, stroking his beard.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Often?” Mara is staring at her nephew-in-law, a suspicious expression on her face. “How long has this been happening?”

 

“Just recently,” he answers, with a shake of his head. His dark hair tumbles down like a half-curtain around his face; the silver streaks glitter under the cockpit’s stark glowpanel light.

 

“Were you in distress?” Mara persists.

 

“Of a sort.”

 

Still, he will not look her way.

 

“Light rises,” Luke muses, “And darkness to meet it.”

 

Rey gasps. “Is this because of us?”

 

“Even if it is, it doesn’t matter. It was inevitable,” comes Luke’s less-than-reassuring reply.

 

She winces. “That doesn’t—” 

 

“It wasn’t _exclusively_ you,” says Mara, shooting her husband a disapproving scowl. “Think of all the newly awakened padawans we have here on Jakku. All using the Force, all following the path of the light.”

 

“Oh,” she sighs, slumping back in her chair. It is too much effort to hide her relief.

 

The moment wilts; dead silence falls among the four Force-sensitives.

 

Finally, Mara picks up the reigns of the conversation. She shakes her head, then smiles at them, a bright genuine smile. “That’s enough talk of darkness for now. Go have your—your honeymoon. Have some fun, enjoy yourselves. Be young and carefree for a while. We’ve got our own work to tend to here. And when we know what’s happening—out there—we’ll be in touch.”

 

Heaving a sigh, Luke nods his endorsement of the plan. “And we’ll all go from there.”

 

Now when Rey looks to Ben, she finds he is already staring at her. His fear— she can feel it, twining with her own, and besides, it’s stamped across his face— is like a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. Another shiver passes through her.

 

“Yeah,” he agrees, just a little bit breathy, just a little bit shakily. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Just as shakily, she says, “O-okay.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Was the distress caused by me?” she asks, once they’ve charted their course and retired to their sleeper.

 

Their sleeper. _Shared_.

 

Positioned on the outside, which has become _his_ side, he looks away at the mess of clothes and dishes strewn about the captain’s quarters. Rey makes a mental note to do some tidying when they awaken; she’s too exhausted, mentally and physically, to insist they get up and do it now.

 

“At the ballet?” she pushes.

 

Nothing.

 

“Ben?”

 

“Hux,” he spits out.

 

“Ah.” She scoots across the mattress and lays her hand on his bare chest, in an attempt to get him to look at her. He does, with troubled eyes. “But he was able to convince you because… because you didn’t know how I felt.” She bites the inside of her cheek, trying to stave off the tears. “Because _I_ couldn’t—didn’t tell you.”

 

“This hasn’t been easy.” His voice is strangled; he lays his hand over hers, pressing it to his bare skin. “For either of us.”

 

“That seems like an understatement.”

 

“It was worth it. All of it.”

 

“Worth the distress?” she frets. “Worth the risk of—whatever that voice was? The darkness?”

 

There is no trace of levity in his voice, no hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Yes, Rey. Even that.”

 

Those words are like the removal of a heavy weight from _her_ chest; she feels like she can breathe again for the first time in hours. “For me, too. Worth it, whatever happens next.”

 

He nods.

 

“Will you—”

 

She hesitates, feeling herself go shy. But is this not the man with whom she wants to spend the rest of her life? Can they _really_ build a life together— as she vowed to herself back on Chandrila, a new vow, to replace the tattered one from her childhood— if she cannot present the difficult questions to him as well as the easy ones?

 

Mara told them to go be together, be themselves, be young. But they’re not as young as they once were, and they have lost so much time that could’ve been shared.

 

There are so many stories she does not know.

 

“Yes,” he answers. “I will, anything.”

 

Rey scrunches her nose at him, and in response, he squeezes the hand still resting over his heart. 

 

“You don’t know what I was going to ask!”

 

She’s not even sure if he tilts his head at her on purpose, if he means for his eyes to shine with awareness, if he’s trying to give her the galaxy’s minutest, subtlest smirk. Maybe it’s all unconscious.

 

“Everything that’s mine is yours. If the question begins with ‘Will you’, the answer is ‘Yes’.”

 

“Maybe it won’t be,” she argues. “Maybe I’ll ask for something you don’t have. Or can’t give me.”

 

He fixes her with an intense look, like all his will and might is focused solely on her. It’s heady, to be regarded in such a way.

 

“I’d find a way,” is his rebuttal. “Ask it.”

 

“I only… I know you better than anyone—and yet, there is so much of your life I’ve no knowledge of. I wondered if you might tell me about it. The… the years I missed, I mean.”

 

“Is that all?” 

 

The intensity cracks, the very air around them seemingly growing lighter. And behind the serious, thoughtful frown he’s been wearing since they said goodbye to Luke and Mara, she finds that old lopsided smile waiting for her. If pressed, Rey would struggle to put into words how much she loves seeing him like this. It’s not just his uneven white teeth, nor the deep dimple in one cheek. It’s not just how it softens his angular face, nor how a tiny web of lines appear at the edges of his dark, gold-and-green-flecked eyes.

 

It is that she has put it there, with her words and her actions. Simple as that.

 

“C’mere,” he says.

 

Lifting his arm in invitation, he beckons, and she goes happily, molding her body against his, tucking her head against the tender place where muscular arm and shoulder meet.

 

“Where to begin?”

 

“Han,” she requests quietly, with a heavy swallow.

 

“Okay,” he breathes, more muted now. “We’ll begin with Han.”

 

“Then your mother. And—and the war.”

 

“Whatever you want. But… after…”  

 

“Yes?”

 

His gaze is searching, his tone gentle. “Will you tell me? About… _your_ mother?”

 

That gentleness makes her throat constrict painfully with a rush of catharsis she suspects will end in tears, but she nods eagerly against his chest. “I will. And Gozetta, too. She’s sent me copies of all the holos Ma saved, from when we were small. I could… show them to you, if you’d like?”

 

“Yes,” he concurs. “I’d like.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

Coruscant's New Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center is truly a harrowing achievement in prisoner housing. Designed to function as a panopticon, it is a mushroom-shaped tower supported by flying buttresses which are augmented by spherical chambers in which the administrators live and work. 

 

Inside the tower, the cells rise along the walls from a ground level which begins down in the underworld of Coruscant, all the way up to a domed roof that brushes the clouds. A column in the center of this tower is filled with windows looking out, and each cell contains a transparisteel wall looking in, so that surveillance is as inescapable as the cell itself.

 

Rey shrinks back at the detention center’s oppressiveness as a guard— one of thousands employed in the massive facility— leads her and Ben to a repulsorpod that quickly raises them up a few hundred levels of windows, then over to one particular cell.

 

She feels his hand seek out hers and clasp it. He brings it to his lips, pressing a quick kiss to her knuckles. Rey sends him a grateful smile; he nods in solemn acknowledgment.

 

As Ergel has been convicted of a non-violent crime and is not considered a particularly dangerous prisoner, the transparisteel partition that keeps him from hurling himself out his cell and down to his death, many meters below, is opened once the repulsorpod is level with its floor. A bridge is extended; Ben and Rey are permitted to enter.

 

“Fifteen minutes visitation,” the guard warns them. “I’ll be back for you. There’s a panic button on the wall if anything goes wrong. Or you can just wave at the guards.” She tips her head in the direction of the column, where holocameras and windows populated with stern, unsmiling faces leave no cell unmonitored. “They’ll be watching.”

 

After passing quickly over the bridge, Ben not far behind, Rey turns to watch it retract. The pod and guard to disappear, the partition closes. She clenches the crinkled top of the plasti-foil bag in her free hand.

 

“So,” her father jeers from behind her, unmistakable derision in his gruff voice, “My _beloved_ daughter has come to see me. Better late than never, s’pose.”

 

She pivots to face him. The cell is austere white. It reminds her of his home in the bowels of Bastatha save for its utter lack of opulence; it is furnished only by a simple metal-framed sleeper, a metal sink, a metal table and chair, and in the far corner, a metal chamber pot. There is a door in the wall opposite the tower; it is through there, she supposes, that he goes to take his meals and daily exercise. 

 

Ergel is seated at the table, but there is no way for her to join him, so she all she can do is come close enough to hover by its opposite side. 

 

He looks awful. He’s grown thin, his face is patchy with the beginnings of a scraggly white beard that matches the white mop atop his head, and the shadows beneath his eyes are deep blue-black. Overnight, it seems, he’s become an old man. All he has to wear is a regulation jumpsuit, cheap syncloth, and slippers to match.

 

There are no sabacc cards in the cell that she can see. Even this simple pleasure— a lifetime of playing solitaire against himself— has been denied Ergel.

 

Ben is a reassuring wall of a man behind her, emanating warmth and solace. She suspects he can sense every uptick of her rising anguish at this scene due to how tightly he’s holding her hand. Furthermore, she takes heart in the certainty that were she to ask, he would get her out of here in a moment’s notice.

 

It’s enough to give her the strength to reply. “Hello, Pa.”

 

“You two, then?” He’s sneering at Ben.

 

She glances back at him. Ben tears his eyes from hers just long enough to nod indifferently to her father, then resumes his vigil over her.

 

“Yes,” she says.

 

Ergel lets out a contemptful snort. “Should’ve known. The ballet, was it? That’s where you met?”

 

“No,” she answers. Ergel opens his mouth but she cuts in before he can speak. “On Jakku. When I was younger—while I was alone. Abandoned.”

 

Ben squeezes her hand; she squeezes it back.

 

“Hmph. Should’ve known you were keeping secrets. Just like your mother in that way.” He crosses his arms and leans back in his uncomfortable metal chair.

 

“What happened to Corwin?” she asks, something that’s been bugging her since the news of the arrest came out.

 

Ergel’s shoulders jerk, an aloof shrug. “Disappeared. Should’ve known better ‘bout that too.”

 

“Yes,” she agrees. “You should’ve. Or you and Verla could’ve listened to me when I warned you about him.”

 

For a torturously long minute, they stare each other down. Rey blinks but does not waver. In the end, it is Ergel who looks down at his feet.

 

“Do you regret any of it?” she asks.

 

“Any of what?” he scoffs. “I’ve done nothing except try to better myself and my family.”

 

Her response is soft, not much above a whisper. “I have regrets.” Now it is _she_ who can feel Ben’s rising anxiety. Another hand squeeze passes between them.

 

“For what?”

 

“For waiting for you. For… for giving up other things, because I thought I had to.”

 

Ergel’s eyes narrow as they dart between the two of them, and Ben draws closer, practically flush with her back. 

 

“But I can’t completely regret it,” she admits.

 

“Well that’s—”

 

“Because for a little while, I had my mother back. And because… I stayed true to what I thought was right. I did… I did what I thought was the right thing.”

 

Her conclusion earns another scoff from her father. “Of course it was the right thing.”

 

Rey shrugs. “Maybe, maybe not. But I thought it was—that’s what matters to me. And that’s all over now, anyway.” With that, she steps forward. Ben chases her, this time _actually_ pressing himself flush against her back, and she can feel the tension coiled in his torso, in his limbs. She sets the plasti-foil bag on the table.

 

“What’s that mean?” Ergel’s gaze settles on the bag.

 

“Protato curls, your favorite. A parting gift.”

 

He frowns.

 

“I’m done, Pa.”

 

“Done with _what_?”

 

“This.” She motions to his cell, and then to him. “I’m sorry about your predicament, although I suspect you have no one to blame but yourself. I won’t be visiting again.” She waits, but Ergel says nothing, just gawks at her, so she barrels on. “You’re going to be here for a long time. I don’t want…” a surge of emotion strangles her, stealing her voice.

 

Ben drops her hand in favor of clutching her shoulders, as if _he_ were the one who is upset, as if she were a stuffed animal he must hold to comfort himself. He rubs his hands up and down her arms, a soothing steady pattern.

 

She feels the ache begin to ease.

 

Ergel rolls his eyes at them.

 

“You shouldn’t wait, like I did,” she gets out between clenched teeth. “I won’t be coming back for you.”

 

That. That makes her father flinch, hard. Again, his eyes sink down to his prison-issue slippers.

 

Horrible, strained silence reigns in the small, white cell. Rey tries not to observe the surroundings anymore; it’s too depressing. She finds her own shoes to be of infinite interest, and stares down at them. When the tears come, they roll down her cheeks and splatter on the toes of each boot.

 

“You’re with him now, then,” Ergel says after a while, leeriness personified. “Moved up in the world. Don’t need your family anymore.”

 

“It’s not like that,” she protests.

 

A raspy laugh. “Why shouldn’t it be? That’s how it’s done. That’s the way of things.”

 

Had his love and approval been so important to her once? She can hardly remember why, after all the things she’s heard him say and seen him do.

 

 _I pity you_ , she thinks wistfully. She wipes the tears from the lashes under her eyes then shakes her head. “Not for me it isn’t.”

 

Ergel meets her gaze once more. “You think you’re better than me, girlie?”

 

“We’re done here,” Ben growls. 

 

He steps away just long enough to wave at the guard’s column, across the way. Then he is at Rey’s back again, big strong hands once more clutching her in a possessive hold. She allows it.

 

No, she doesn’t just allow it. She half-turns and clings to him, gladly taking what he’s offering.

 

“You don’t get to decide that, jerk-ass,” Ergel sends back, realizing what Ben's done. He rises from his chair. “She’s still _my_ daughter.”

 

“Only by birth,” Rey counters, calm now. “Only through genetics. No… no, he’s right. It’s time for us to go.”

 

The transparisteel partition sliding open is the most beautiful, welcome sound she’s ever heard.

 

“Good luck in prison,” she tosses out, her penultimate sentiment before she turns and lets Ben escort her back onto the repulsorpod’s bridge.

 

The true last words are thus, spoken as she watches the partition once more lock Ergel away in his cell:

 

“Enjoy the protato curls, Pa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too bad, so sad for old Ergel! Some notes?
> 
> Who are [Kazuda Xiono](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kazuda_Xiono) and [Synara San](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Synara_San) and is this my way of suggesting you watch [_Star Wars: Resistance_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Resistance) if you are not already? [Perhaps.] Who are the [Mirialan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mirialan), the [Rodian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rodian), and the [Jawa](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jawa)?
> 
> Where are the [Pliadi di am Imperium](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pliada_di_am_Imperium), the [Glitannai Esplanade](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Glitannai_Esplanade), the [Ninth Hall of Justice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ninth_Hall_of_Justice) and the [[New] Republic Judiciary Detention Center](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Republic_Judiciary_Central_Detention_Center)? 
> 
> [Also: what is a [panopticon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon) and what are [flying buttresses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_buttress)?]
> 
> Creatures! [Basalt clams](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Basalt_clam) and [Kath hounds](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kath_hound).
> 
> What is [balmgrass](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Balmgrass) and does it not sound kind of tempting as a spot for some afternoon hanky-panky?
> 
> What's a [Balmorra Cruiser](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Balmorra_Cruiser) and what's a [starhopper](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Starhopper)?
> 
> Materials: [plasti-foil](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plasti-foil) and [syncloth](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Syncloth).
> 
> [Pepper pretzels](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Pepper_pretzel) sound like a thing that I would very much like to eat.
> 
> What's a [bowcaster](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bowcaster)?
> 
> [Credit ingots](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Credit_ingot): because the galaxy is super-advanced and runs on a computerized credit system, but there's just something so satisfying about having some coins jangling around in your pocket sometimes.
> 
> Would you attend the [Galactic Fair](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Fair)/[Fête Week](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fete_Week)? I for sure would.
> 
> What was the [Battle of Endor](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Endor) and the [Iron Blockade](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_Blockade)?
> 
> What is [treason](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Treason)? What is [marriage](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Marriage)? [In gffa terms.]
> 
> Well that's it for this chapter. Just one more to go! The finale is already written so it just needs some editing and formatting; I hope to have it up by the end of week! Thank you, as ever, for reading. 💓


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “[Rey] was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain [Solo’s] affection.” —Jane Austen, _Persuasion_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One final round of my deepest and most heart-felt thank you's to my brilliant, kind, and generous beta reader, Mixy. Some of these drafts easily passed 10 and 20k words, yet she still sifted through each and every word and improved much of this story along the way. Thank you also to Trixie and Kat for being so supportive and giving many of these chapters a read-through, and to Becca, who let me bounce ideas off of her and gave her canonverse stamp of approval or disapproval to them. And to you, dear reader. 💓

**42 ABY.**

 

 

_So brave. So brave, so strong, so good._

 

_So kriffing good._

 

This is what Ben Solo is thinking, a loop that plays ad nauseum while they exit Coruscant’s atmosphere. Once they’ve gotten far, far away, he sets 2BB-2 to work in the engineering bay and puts the _Falcon_ on autopilot. Then, silently, hand in hand, he leads Rey back to hold three, at the stern of the ship.

 

He’s going to tell her what he’s been thinking since the moment they stepped foot in the prison. No, earlier: the thing he’s always thought about her, since that first day at Niima Outpost.

 

“You are so good,” he says, but it isn’t enough, doesn’t do her justice, the word _good_. And yet he knows no other way to describe it. Or maybe it’s that he knows lots of other ways, but none of them feel quite as true.

 

She blushes prettily at the compliment.

 

“Good in every way,” he murmurs, shutting the blast door behind them. Then he herds her back against it.

 

“How do you know?” she whispers, a challenge.

 

“Because I see you, Rey. You know this.” He can tell she’s distracted by his body pressing into hers, the way she’s petting his biceps through his shirt, so with his pointer finger, he pushes her chin upwards until their eyes meet. “ _Tell_ me you know this.”

 

“I know this,” she sighs. “Ben, I love you so much.”

 

“Mm,” he hums, nodding. He reaches down to cup her; even through her trousers and her underwear, the heat of her is sultry, scorching. “I wanted you like this that night on Jakku, when we kissed in here. Tell me you remember it.”

 

“Ben.” A hapless groan, thrusting herself into his hand, but he cannot let this go.

 

 _“Please_ remember it,” he begs.

 

“Of course I do. I know… I knew you did. Knew you wanted me. It drove me mad.”

 

“Did _you_ want _me_ like this? Right here?”

 

“So much.”

 

“How did you stay so good? All that pain, all that loneliness—how are you so—so _good_ , Rey?”

 

“Ben.” Again, she pushes her sex against his hand. The pressure has her eyes fluttering shut.

 

“Words aren’t my strength,” he says, making a tacit truth an explicit one. “This, you also know.”

 

“Mm, you’re not so bad with words,” she croons.

 

“Not so hot, either.”

 

“Please, Ben.” Her eyes open, shining hazel and fierce in the hold’s dim light. “I want you.”

 

“I love you,” he replies.

 

Her smile makes her nose crinkle in that way that still drives him wild. It’s too cute, too sweet for what he has in mind. He leans down and catches her mouth and kisses her, a filthy kiss with tongue and teeth and low groans and grinding himself up between her legs. And she gives it right back to him, just as good.

 

Is there good without Rey? What is Rey, if not quintessential goodness?

 

Ben has known joy and sorrow and longing and independence and fortitude and suffering and physical pain and heartbreak and a thousand other words used to describe what it means to go out into the galaxy and live a life, but it always comes down to this: what he knows of good, he knows because of Rey.

 

“Need you,” he chokes out, winded, when they part. His cock twinges, pushing insistently against his trousers. Need feels like an understatement.

 

“Me too. But this door is awful. Cold, and…”

 

“Okay, okay.” Returning her to her feet, he takes a step back. “How—”

 

“Let me take care of you. That’s what _I_ want, alright? You took care of me so well today, Ben.” Her expression is earnest, her eyes poring over his face.

 

“Your father is a bastard,” he mutters, deluged once more with that rising tide of red, raw anger he felt earlier in the prison. “May he rot in there forever.”

 

“But you didn’t provoke him—didn’t fight him. You wanted to, I could feel it. But you didn’t. _You_ were so good, for me. Being there, supporting me.”

 

He doesn’t know what to say to that. They stare at each other, panting, until he dips his head in acceptance of her compliment.

 

“Take off your clothes and sit over there,” she commands, jerking her head towards one of the hold’s plasteel crates.

 

Maybe it’s cheating to plumb the depths of Rey’s emotions, the mad swirl of her thoughts; he only searches for an instant, just long enough to discern it’s a seduction she has in mind.

 

No complaints there. He does as she’s ordered, shucking his clothing hurriedly. She smiles; he thinks she’s probably well aware of what he’s done, but she doesn’t seem to have any complaints, either.

 

And then she comes to stand before him, just out of reach. Her eyes hone in on his throbbing cock and her smile turns vixenish.

 

“What’re you up to, Rey of Jakku?” He lets his voice drop, sly, deeper than usual, maybe trying to seduce her right back.

 

“Keep your eyes on me.”

 

It makes him so kriffing proud to hear her speak so confidently. And hot. It makes him very, very hot. He’s begun to sweat, in fact. His mouth is dry, parched. 

 

Thirsty.

 

She reaches for the leather strapped over her drapey tunic, unbuckling each belt with painstaking care, never taking her eyes from his.

 

This could be dangerous, in how much Ben likes it. How he could get used to it. How he enjoys watching her pull that tunic and then the simple undershirt and brasserie over her head, toe off her boots then slip out of her trousers and underwear in a manner more utilitarian than sensual.

 

Socks. All she’s got on is an old, darned pair of socks, one stuck up on her calf, one wrinkled around her ankle.

 

Ben makes a mental note to find her new socks. Buy them, make them, whatever she wants.

 

Lots and lots of… socks.

 

“Talk to me.” Her voice is softer now, suddenly shy. “Do you like this?”

 

“Yes,” he wheezes. “For edge’s sake, yes.”

 

“Which parts?”

 

The sight of her— lithe and tall and sinuous, healthy, that flare of her hips and tuck of her waist, the pink of her nipples, and the pale swell of her breasts, the moments of angularity when she leans this way and that, the glowpanels overhead creating a timeless chiaroscuro of her body— she is, to Ben, perfection. Her cheekbones, her clavicle, her hip bones, her knees, all the places where she is hard bone; they cast soft shadows. Freckles adorn her nose and shoulders. And gleaming in the light is the downy hair along her tawny arms and legs, those _breasts_ , whose weight he has held in his hands, the dark glistening hair at the apex of her thighs, the nectar that he has tasted and intends to taste again, a hint of that curve where her jogan-shaped ass meets her legs, those legs that just go on and on and on…

 

All the places where she is so unbelievably soft.

 

Rey. His Rey. Strong Rey, brave Rey, loyal Rey. Good.

 

What parts does he like? It’d be easier to tell her what he does not: a list devoid of items.

 

“Turn around?” he dares to ask.

 

She does. Then, darting a bold look over her shoulder, she gives a little wiggle. Her pert cheeks shake adorably.

 

What he finally musters, his voice a withered rasp, his lips dry, cock engorged and heavy and aching, bobbing against his abdomen, is: “Beautiful.” But that’s not exactly it; or rather, it’s not just that. He clenches his jaw, then tries again. “Sexy.”

 

It’s not a word he’s used often, if ever. He never went for that kind of talk on-duty or off during his service, often departing from common areas mid-conversation when talk turned to choobies and tits and charging up a loading ramp or hooking up someone's power coupling. And he’d cringed whenever Han even broached the topic of sexuality; their one-time trip to the brothel was enough for him to swear off casual encounters and any discussion of them for life. 

 

Until Rey.

 

He’s got Rey to help him now, doesn’t he? Rey lets him spout off all the filth that comes into his mind; he’d even go so far as to say she likes it.

 

“Ben,” she murmurs, advancing on him. “You can do better than that.”

 

He licks his lips. “All of it. All of your body is sexy. I could die a happy man like this.”

 

“Please don’t do that.” She smirks right before she turns and reverses towards his lap, backing that luscious ass into his waiting hands. “Not for a long time, if you don’t mind.”

 

He nods.

 

Legs splayed, a little ungainly, she reaches back to grip him in her thin, nimble fingers. He sees now what she has intended and likes her design. So, to assist, he wraps an arm around her waist and scoots back while pulling her properly into his lap. Once she’s braced her folded legs, sock-clad feet gripping the edge of the crate to either side of his thighs, she rubs just the head against herself while pushes herself back against him.

 

This is the part that still makes Ben nearly swallow his own tongue, every time, even after the sex-filled blur that was their journey to Bastatha, even after those wanton first few days of their reunion. The feeling of her, so wet, so warm, so inviting. Her soft lips part for him, granting him access. With a careful thrust, he works himself part of the way inside her cunt.

 

“How’s that,” he mumbles.

 

By way of response, she lets her head roll back onto his shoulder and takes hold of his forearm. Her other arm snakes around his neck and tugs forward, bringing his lips to hers. Once they’re kissing, she moans into his mouth.

 

That’s an order if ever he’s been given one, and Ben is not in the business of disregarding Rey’s orders, so he huffs, then gives a harder jolt of his hips while pushing her body down to meet his own.

 

“Oh!”

 

A second’s worth of panic flares then dies; she’s giggling. “Be-e-en,” she hiccups.

 

When he’s seated like this inside her, that first moment of returning home— because how can this not be home for him, when he can feel that steady throbbing, that delicious fullness she experiences like it’s him taking a cock all the while losing his mind at how tight she is, how velvety-soft and yielding— he forgets everything. Whatever came before, whatever will come after.

 

“Use your words, Rey,” he taunts, guttural, settling his arm lower to help her lift and lower herself.

 

“Mmm,” she taunts right back. “It’s so _good_.”

 

“Agreed.”

 

How can someone molded by a place so rough, so cruel as Jakku, be so soft, have so much compassion? Such kindness in her heart? Such sweetness in her body? How did that place not leave her as desiccated as the nightbloomers she saved?

 

He does not know. He only knows she is a miracle. Good, utterly good. And he will spend the rest of his life telling her that, showing her, making her happy.

 

She pushes on his chest to get him to lean back on his elbows, then rides him like she might a fathier. It feels lewd like this, bolder and more visceral than other positions they’ve tried. And he does love it when they go slow, take their time, are tender and careful with each other. But by all of Alderaan’s ghosts, there are few sights quite as beautiful in this galaxy as Rey’s pert ass shaking as she bounces herself on his cock.

 

So good.

 

Every time he’s on the brink of coming, she slows, turning her head just enough to shoot him an utterly devious grin.

 

“Wait,” she huffs out, “wait for me.”

 

She knows _exactly_ what she’s doing to him.

 

When she begins to slow, tiring, a lovely sheen of sweat covering her skin and tiny droplets of it rolling down the long line of her back, shoulders rising and falling with panted breaths, the tips of her loose hair damp, he pushes himself up to a seated position again.

 

“Hold on,” he instructs her.

 

Ben can sense her gratitude, her relief, when she reclines against him. He slams up into her, seeking out her clit, but she’s got the jump; he finds her fingers already there, already rubbing herself.

 

“Breasts,” she gasps, head lolling across his shoulder.

 

She’s so wet she’s dripping down onto his balls; he’s heard her request but he can’t resist a taste. He pauses long enough to swipe his finger past her folds then brings it to his lips.

 

Salt. But sweet. Intrinsically Rey.

 

A besotted, half-drunk giggle escapes her. “Cheeky.”

 

He knows now how she likes to be touched; even if he hadn’t learned from their many, many couplings, he can _feel_ her delight when he palms one breast, then the other gently, strumming the nipples with his thumb.

 

He can feel it like someone’s touching him, strumming his own nipple. He resumes his thrusting, going much harder than he had before, practically ramming up into her. Is it too much? The sound is lewd, wet squelching and the slapping of skin. 

 

The air smells like sweat and sex and _them_ ; it is also filled with floating, traveling objects; the contents of the hold, crates and ship components set into motion unconsciously with the Force as they lose themselves in each other. Ben has become accustomed to this.

 

But worry plagues him. Is it too much? Is he fucking her too hard? He checks her face and finds her eyes closed, a blissful smile on her pretty lips.

 

“Okay?”

 

“Keep going,” she demands.

 

He tilts his hips, hammering at that place that makes her go all weak-limbed and shivery for him. Her pleasure is not just a scent in his nose, not just an expression on her face, not just her pretty cunt clamping down on him; it’s his, too. A phantom sensation pushing on his belly, that throbbing inside himself.

 

It’s strange, this connection. And it’s getting more complex, more entangled every day.

 

For this, he is glad.

 

He’s going to come, feels it in his spine and his gut and behind his balls; he tells her as much, and she nods raggedly. “Me too.”

 

They don’t always come together, but this time they do. She flutters around him, a wet satin vice, and he’s long since given up trying to hide any emotion from her, so he moans out his pleasure, his release, pushing himself as deep as he can inside.

 

“So _good_ ,” she murmurs, sleepy, her body slumping into his as he pulls out.

 

He wraps his arms around her limp form and leans them both forward, pressing one ear to her back to listen to her heartbeat while he lets his own return to a normal speed.

 

There it is, fast and strong and steady.

 

 _You are mine,_ he hears in that persistent thud-thud, thud-thud. _You are home now._

 

Safe. Free. Loved.

 

This is what he needs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Akiva is a sweltering jungle planet at the edge of the galaxy, not far from Tatooine, Geonosis, and Mustafar. From a distance it is white, a result the constant cloud cover, and when they dip down into the atmosphere, they pass through at least two small storms on their way to Myrra, the capital.

 

Myrra itself is mostly stone and wood and steel, interrupted here and there by modern and modern-ish tech. As they approach, it rises up from the sweeping canopy of trees like an island. Everything is built up on planks or atop tall stone foundations, to account for the mausims, wet seasons that bring heavy rains and winds for weeks on end; there are rolled-up metal ladders stored on the roofs of all the buildings in anticipation of the mausims’ flash floods.

 

Luckily, neither Myrra nor the surrounding jungleland is in the midst of a wet season when Rey and Ben descend upon the city’s outskirts, making landfall in a clearing near the tall, narrow plastocrete home of the Wexleys.

 

Though the city is less populated out this way, there are still a wide variety of species walking the wide dirt roads around the Wexley home: Abednedo and Human, Ithorians with protruding, sharklike heads, wizened Koorivars and double-joweled Sullustans. Shops and homes hover on planks to either side of the roads; people pass in and out with casual ease, calling to each other in Galactic Basic or their own languages, sharing their good humor in the universal language of laughter.

 

Despite the fierce heat, there is a feeling of laconic good will and community on the road, and it does not stop at the threshold of the Wexley domicile.

 

They are friendly, good-natured people. More than happy to keep an eye on their old friend Han’s Correllian freighter for a month or so while Ben and Rey disappear into the jungle, borrowing the vacation treehouse the Wexleys themselves built long ago during their own honeymoon.

 

They share a few rounds of homegrown Akivan grog and a meal of arguez sausage sandwiches together. Snap extends an offer for them to stay the night if they’re tired, and without deliberation, the invitation is kindly but firmly declined.

 

After a quick jaunt through the local market to stock up on the supplies they’ll need, Ben and Rey pick up their rented bala-bala speeders— tiny, rickety things, barely able to support the weight of their riders plus the supplies. Then they head south, through the narrow streets of the city, off into the trees.

 

Rey doesn’t know where they are headed like Ben does, so at first she follows his lead. But soon she tires of that and takes it into her mind to race him. No more than a swipe at his thoughts is needed for her to understand the layout of the terrain.

 

With that, she revs the sputtering engine of her bala-bala, and zooms ahead of him.

 

“Hey!”

 

“Last one there has to carry the food up the ladder!” she calls back, cackling.

 

“Traitor!”

 

It’s bellowed, thunderous, but he barely reaches the end of the word before he begins laughing too, and a second later, he is neck and neck with her, revving his own bala-bala in challenge.

 

“Aren’t you the famous Captain Solo?” she calls, flirtatious. “Thought you could fly _any_ thing!”

 

“We’ll see!”

 

That’s the last thing she hears before he pulls ahead once more. Then there is no more time for taunts or teasing, because the undergrowth grows thicker, the trees more dense, and she must focus on navigation and outmaneuvering him, both of which require all her concentration.

 

It is, she can feel, the same for him.

 

Still, when she sees the squat jarwal tree up ahead, the Wexley’s treehouse situated securely upon its boughs, she pushes her engine to its utter limits before slamming on the brakes, convulsing to a stop centimeters from the house’s dangling rope ladder.

 

A moment later, Ben pulls to an equally graceless stop behind her.

 

“It would seem,” she says, swinging her leg over the seat and turning to tilt her head at him, not bothering to hide her victorious grin, “that I am the winner.”

 

He runs a hand through his hair, peers up the rungs of the ladder and back to her. Then he breaks into one of his brilliant smiles, beaming at her as he climbs off his bala-bala and lumbers over to press a chaste kiss to her cheek.

 

“It would seem you are,” is his gracious reply.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Once he’s dropped the coolth backpacks full of food on the floor, he lingers in the doorway of the simple one-room house, watching as she investigates its contents: a table and chairs, a water spigot in the wall under which sits another table and a basin, a cooking burner, a small shelf of games and medical supplies. Once she’s done this, she collapses into a wide fabric hammock hanging in the corner.

 

“Simple. But clean. Good hammock. I like it,” she declares.

 

He nods, looking pleased.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Later, they sit out on the netting-shrouded balcony, watching a fiery sun sink down into the jungle, listening to the whooping of Akiva’s clever-birds, the hooting of the atele, and the lilting whistle of the cerulean skycatchers. He’d sprawled out here on the balcony’s puff-cot after they’d shared a few glasses of Akivan grog, and Rey had followed, settling herself atop him.

 

 _Jungle_ , Rey thinks, _is such a simple word for all the varieties of splendor this planet holds._

 

Stretching out before them is a vast landscape of broad-leafed asuka trees, tall, narrow Oka-wood trees, and the gnarled grasping limbs of old jarwal trees. Vines have grown up and over and around them all, swinging from tree to tree, and the air is still so hot that it appears the world is steamy, a dewy shimmer over everything.

 

In the distance, the tops of crumbling and vine-choked temples poke up out of the trees, cast in shadow by the glowing sky.

 

“Built by the Ahia-Ko?” Ben inquires, peering down at Rey. “The temples.”

  

“Mm-hmm,” she replies, not lifting her head from his chest. “They built the ancient catacombs under Myrra too, according to Snap’s mother.”

 

He nods tiredly, then turns his head back to the sunset. “They used to say something about the water on this planet.”

 

“Oh? What’s that?”

 

She can feel him wracking his memory, searching for something Luke told him once.

 

“The Ahia-Ko believed the rivers in the canyons were so pure they could cleanse a person of their sins.”

 

“D’you think we need that?” she mumbles sleepily.

 

He shakes his head. “Just an old belief.”

 

“Still…”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Maybe we should go for a swim one day,” she says. “Just… just to be sure.”

 

“Would we be clothed during this swim?”

 

She tilts her head, chin on his sternum, and makes her best bedroom eyes up at him. A sly smile plays at his lips.

 

“I don’t see why we should be. Seems illogical, don’t you think?”

 

“I do,” he says. Then, after a moment, his eyebrow cocks upward. “It’s a good plan, Rey. We’ll go tomorrow.”

 

She nods, lets out a tipsy, excited giggle. His contentment is like a warm blanket wrapped around them, lulling her. She blinks once, twice, and her eyes slip closed.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“What is it?” she asks, still groggy, as they sip their caf the next morning.

 

“I was born the day the first Galactic Concordance was signed,” he begins, then pauses, studying her face. “Never enjoyed the significance of that.”

 

They’re on the poof-cot again, but this time, they’re seated side by side. A stack of dirty breakfast plates and silverware sits by Rey’s foot.

 

“Is that today?” she wonders.

 

“No. But _your—_ ”

 

Oh.

 

“I don’t know it,” she admits, understanding now what he’s getting at. “I asked Ma once, but it made her cry so I dropped it. And… Ergel didn’t care enough to remember.”

 

His plush lips tighten to a thin, angry line at that. After a moment of anger, he pulls in a deep breath and relaxes. “So choose a day.”

 

“I’ve never…” _considered it_ , she almost says. _I didn’t think I was allowed that. Or that it mattered to anyone._

 

“I figured.” He reaches for her, plucking at the trails of her flowing tunic, and yanks gently until she shifts. The air-filled cot beneath them gives way beneath their weight, depositing her onto his lap.

 

“Ben!” she chirps, with a laugh, not at all distressed. She rolls her eyes at him, then throws an arm over his shoulders and takes an obnoxiously loud slurp of her caf.

 

But his voice is solemn when next he speaks. “Name the day, Rey—let me celebrate you.”

 

She looks off at the bright blue sky, absent yesterday’s menacing clouds. It’s going to be hot, and sunny, and beautiful. Like Jakku, but humid and lush. Perfect, if spent in the cool shade of the jungle canyons.

 

“Today, then,” she rasps, seeking out his lips. “I choose today.”

 

“Good.” He kisses her, and when they part, his lips tickle against her cheek as he murmurs, “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

In the Canyon of Akar, the crystalline waters run fast and furious. For millennia they have done so, carving the deep, mossy canyon out of the jungle, though the jungle has grown down into it, greedily following the water. The steep sides of the canyon bear evidence of its pursuit; verdant life, wide-leafed ferns and twisted roots of jarwal trees, all dripping with the same vines that drape themselves from everything else, check Ben and Rey’s descent as they venture down to the river.

 

They get there eventually. Downstream from the imposing Witch’s Finger, a cliff shaped like a crooked digit over which the water spouts, down, down, down into the canyon, a glorious thundering cascade, they find a small pool offside the frothing rapids, a little bit of shallows where the water swirls in gentle eddies.

 

In the distance, the ruins of the ancient Ahia-Ko’s oldest, finest temple complex stand crumbling. That and the Witch’s Finger and the creatures of Akiva’s jungle— birds, and insects, the small rodent fengla and the fish that dart to and fro in the shallows— are the only witnesses to Ben and Rey’s undressing, and their slow expedition into the water.

 

It is cold, but it is good. Rey bends to cup her hands, and brings some to her lips.

 

Sweet, clean nothing. Just like when she stuck out her tongue to catch snowflakes on the Zirfan glacier on Rhinnal. A hint of something mineral, maybe, but still pleasing, still refreshing.

 

She glances up at Ben. He’s cupping himself, grimacing as he gropes forward into the water, up to his navel, then even deeper than that.

 

“Does it get warmer?” she gripes.

 

“You get used it,” floats back his answer, over his bare broad shoulders. His tone is teasing, good-humored.

 

She follows him in. She comes to understand the impulse to protect sensitive bits when the water reaches her breasts, her nipples puckering and her whole body breaking out in pimpled flesh.

 

“Brr,” she shivers.

 

He turns, arms flung wide open. She sways into his embrace; the water has dampened his heat but not extinguished it.

 

 _Nothing could do that_ , she thinks, taking heart.

 

Like a cold-blooded creature that has found a patch of sun in which to bask, she cozies up to his solid form, slipping her arms around his neck to hang from him as he brings them yet deeper into the little pool. When he is up to his shoulders, and Rey can no longer feel the mucky, sedgy bed beneath her feet, he halts.

 

“Feeling purified?” he asks.

 

She releases one hand from his neck to flick at his taut, flat nipple. He chuffs softly in response, and it turns to a moan when the flick is followed by a caress. She ventures lower, finding the hard muscles of his abdomen tensed under his soft, equally pebbled skin, and lower still, to his flaccid cock. The huff-groan she draws from him when she runs her finger down its length makes her laugh.

 

“Not quite,” she says, with affected guilelessness. “We’ll need the soap, I fear.”

 

“Whatever you want, birthday girl.”

 

Rey likes the sound of that.

 

 

. . .

 

 

The bar of blue soap he pulls from his bag is scented with asuka blossoms, a fragrance both herbal and floral. Ben warms the bar in his hands, beckoning her back to the shore of the little pool, then begins to rub it in small, focused circles across her chest and down her arms, leaving a trail of soap lather behind. He works methodically, missing no spots, and although there is sensuality in this— his hands on her, touching her lightly to direct her to raise her arms or spread her legs— none of his touches seem to carry an erotic intent. Just gentleness, just tenderness.

 

When the work is done, she follows him into the water, and lets him begin the process anew with her hair. After he’s accumulated a frothy little mountain of soapsuds, he puts one big hand on her lower back and one on her sternum. He dips her back, and lets the eddying water carry the froth away.

 

Then, giving her a pointed look, he hands the soap to her. They share a secret, playful smile.

 

She gets to work, taking great satisfaction in a job done thoroughly, even if it does end with her hand on his semi-hard cock, pumping away beneath the water’s surface, and his fingers exploring her with equal ardor.

 

Then his hands are on her behind, urging, pulling. Full of trust, she leaps up onto him.

 

He catches her.

 

They stay in that becalmed pool of water long past the point of pruned fingertips, of numb toes, of shivering mauve lips.

 

Not that either of them can be bothered with those minor details.

 

 

. . .

 

 

“Leia wants us to visit her on Hosnian Prime soon,” he informs her as they warm up later in their treehouse, devouring a meal of dao-ben steamed buns and roasted florakeet. “She’s inviting Lando. Amilyn. Luke and Mara, too, probably.”

 

Through her mouthful of steamed bun, she replies, “Wonderful!”

 

He pauses. “Is it?”

 

“I love your family—I just wish I had an equally interesting one of my own to offer.”

 

“You have the Damerons,” he points out. “That Miraluka woman’s interesting—she’s taken you under her wing. Luke and Mara would adopt you tomorrow if you asked. And…” 

 

When he doesn’t finish, she nudges him with her foot. “And?”

 

“Han wanted you to be his daughter-in-law,” he mutters, frowning at his meal.

 

“Oh, Ben.”

 

She doesn’t know what else to say, so she reaches across the table and cups his cheek, caressing the scar with her thumb. His lips tremble, then he works his jaw, chewing on nothing but his emotions— she can feel them too, that surge of grief and regret, even after all this time— and they stay that way for several long minutes.

 

“Would you want that, some day?” 

 

His question is roundabout, but she understands. Tenderly, she answers, “I consider it as good as done for you and me. But we can make it official, if you’d like.”

 

“Leia might.”

 

She beams at him. “We’ll let her plan it.”

 

“It’ll be a nightmare. Somewhere showy, packed with politicians and nobles.”

 

“But it’ll make her happy,” she counters. “And… Han, too, maybe. Wherever he is.”

 

“Yeah,” he agrees, meeting her eyes. His own are wet. She brushes away the wetness that has spilled onto his high cheekbones.

 

“I love you,” she says.

 

He turns his head enough to catch the palm of her hand in a kiss, and she is inundated with his mind, his spirit— love, affection, admiration, gratitude, sorrow, relief. It is as overwhelming as it is welcome.

 

 _I love you_ , he thinks, his eyes on her, and she can hear the words as clearly as if they came from her own mind. She gasps.

 

They remain locked like that for another moment, until he clears his throat again. “‘Course, you also have Gozetta.”

 

“Oh? Have you come around on my sister?”

 

He huffs, but she can tell his mood has lightened. “Gozetta’s young. Little annoying. But… she’s not so bad.”

 

“No.” She shakes her head agreeably. “She’s not, is she?”

 

“Chose you over Ergel, so she must have some sense in her two brain cells,” he remarks.

 

“ _Ben_!” 

 

She’s already laughing, though, at the mischievous light in his eyes, at that telltale twist of his lips that says he’s trying not to smile, and at his amused air. 

 

“My sister is more educated than either of us and she’s only getting started.”

 

“True,” he concedes. “She’ll probably be the best of all of us.”

 

Rey smiles at the thought. “Sounds just fine to me.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

One night, she is awakened by the azure glow of the datapad in Ben’s free hand. She lays nestled against him, his firm bulk pulling the fabric hammock down and keeping Rey tucked in close to his body, not that she minds. One arm is holding her to him; she has been drooling on his smooth chest for edge knows how long. The saliva shines by the light of the datapad.

 

Outside their little treehouse haven, it is raining. Not a mausim, by her less-than-expert estimation; just a nighttime shower. The faint sound of it hitting the wooden roof is musical and soothing.

 

“Ben?” she croaks, still half-tangled in a dream that is already fading.

 

 “Hey,” he says, quiet, whispered almost.

 

“What’s going on?”

 

“Nothing.” His full lips brush against her forehead. “Everything’s fine.”

 

She rubs the sleep from her eyes and angles the datapad towards herself, but the words blur together.

 

“I’m too tired to read this,” she grumbles.

 

A exhaled huff, something like a laugh. It warms her heart to hear him make that noise for her again. “It’s a history.”

 

She blinks, then casts her gaze up at him. He’s working his jaw, like he always has when he’s upset or worried. A muscle under his left eye is twitching.

 

“Of?”

 

“The Jedi Order.”

 

“Any good?” She squints as she makes a second pass at the text, but the words still refuse to come into focus.

 

“No,” he says dryly.

 

She snorts. Then, a moment later, trying not to sound too worried though she knows he can probably feel it: “Can’t you sleep?”

 

The only response is a sigh.

 

“The Jedi Order.” She considers that for a moment. “You’re worried about the darkness,” she intuits.

 

When she turns her gaze to him again, he is considering her, his brow furrowed. She can tell she’s hit on the truth.

 

“Out there?” she muses, then rests her hand on his chest, right where she’s been drooling. “Or what you think might still rest in here?”

 

“Both,” comes his choked reply, his lower lip trembling. “Force help me, all this time and it’s still both.”

 

“I won’t tell you not to be worried. I’m worried too,” she confesses. “About what’s out there. Not in here.” She taps his chest. “Gozetta’s got the right of it after all, I suppose. Education is a good defense.”

 

“Exactly.”

 

“But I’m _not_ worried about this,” she reiterates, lightly scraping her fingers across his pectorals. “This, I know. Like it’s my own.”

 

He says nothing but pulls her closer, burying his face in her hair.

 

“Did you learn anything?” she asks.

 

“The story of a knight… a few, who fell to the dark side and were restored to the light,” is his pensive reply.

 

“Well that’s something, isn’t it?”

 

“It _is_ something,” he agrees.

 

“Darth Vader was restored to the light. By the love of his son,” she notes. “Or so the story goes.”

 

“That story’s true.” He hesitates, but only for a moment. “Rey… the time will come for us to fight whatever’s out there. I can feel it.”

 

She nods, knowing all too well the feeling he’s talking about. “As Jedi?”

 

His shoulder rises and falls in a shrug, jostling her head. “Maybe.”

 

“Okay.” She gives a less certain nod. “Then… we will.”

 

“We’ll need a Jedi’s weapon. And training.”

 

“I wouldn’t mind wearing a holster again—I rather liked that.”

 

“I liked it, too,” he says, ogling her.

 

“Ben,” she simpers, and he rumbles out a laugh, for which she is grateful. “But that’s not a Jedi’s weapon, is it? They used those… those glowy swords? But where do we get one of those?”

 

He shakes his head. “We don’t. We make them ourselves.”

 

“How?”

 

“We’ll have to find our own power sources,” he replies, speaking slowly, thoughtfully. “Kyber crystals. From the planet Ilum. Or Lothal, maybe.” A pause. He’s frowning. “I think.”

 

“So… we’ll do that?”

 

A deep breath drawn, his chest— her pillow— rising and falling. “Yeah,” he whispers.

 

“Ben.” She waits until his dark eyes, reflecting the blue glow of the datapad, land on hers. She sets her jaw, and uses her sternest tone when she tells him, “You won’t be like… like him, even if you make a laser sword.”

 

“Lightsaber,” he corrects.

 

“Whatever.”

 

“If we do this…” Oh, but she can see the agony, there on his face and in his mind. She wriggles upwards until she can bury her hands in his soft hair and tug his brow forward to meet hers. Inhaling her exhaled breath, he gasps, “You have to stop me if that ever happens. Put me down however you need to.”

 

Distraught, her voice cracks. “I don’t like this.”

 

“I know.” His hands run soothing trails up and down her bare back. “It’s a terrible thing to ask of you, Rey. But… there’s no one else I trust with it.”

 

“Well,” she comes back with, “ _You’ll_ have to keep _me_ in check if I ever go all prideful and squirrelly like Ergel.”

 

He coughs a dry laugh at that. “I’m serious, Rey.”

 

“So am I!”

 

“Promise me you’ll do what has to be done,” he insists.

 

She chews the inside of her cheek, staring into his eyes, attempting to ease his distress. And in a moment, he gives a great sigh. Then some of the tension in his arms and legs is released. He falls slack against her.

 

“…If it comes to that,” she allows. “Which it _won’t_.”

 

“If it comes to that, which it won’t,” he repeats, then stutters out, “You—you… sound so sure.”

 

“I am. How could you fall to the dark side? You have me.”

 

He works his jaw for a moment. “Anakin had Padmé.”

 

“It seems to me that your grandmother was a lovely woman with a brilliant political mind but she was not _me_ , Benjamin Solo.”

 

He cocks a brow.

 

“She was no feral desert rat,” she spits out, taking ownership of the insult, taking pride in it.

 

“Rey—”

 

“She wasn’t!” Rey interjects. “I’d fight _dirty_ for you, Ben. I’d kill anyone who tried to tempt you with that life—with the dark side—anyone who tried to take _this_ life from me. I’ve waited too long and suffered too much to lose you like that.” She nods her head once she’s finished, for emphasis.

 

He swallows, eyes slipping shut. Quietly, under his breath, he says, “I know.”

 

“I’ve got your back. Have _you_ got mine?”

 

“Always,” he vows.

 

“Forever?”

 

A solemn nod.

 

“Then,” she declares, chucking his chin to get him to open his eyes and take in her firm smile, her eagerness, her resolution, “in the morning, let’s go lift something. A ship. Some rocks. Anything.”

 

That smile, he returns. Leans in and kisses her squarely, properly, the way she likes best. The way that leaves her breathless and thoughtless and wanting, wanting, always wanting more.

 

“Whatever you want, Rey.”

 

 

. . .

 

 

The morning comes, though they make no rush of it, shuffling as they put together a breakfast of tangoo melon and florakeet egg omelets and caf, getting distracted every few minutes by a kiss or a touch.

 

But eventually, they climb down from their tree and wander out into the jungle. They hike until they find a clearing, then settle themselves cross-legged in the dark dirt.

 

“So,” says Ben. “Lift a rock.”

 

He is smiling, but the smile is laced with durasteel. Rey smiles back, determined. He wants to see what she can do? So be it.

 

“Close your eyes,” she directs, repeating a command he gave her long ago. He obeys, and she lets her own flutter shut as well.

 

She reaches out, into the jungle around them. Overhead, an atele hoots and the ya-ya flies buzz, the air practically hisses with steam and heat, the fat waxy leaves of the akusa trees brush against the needle-shaped ones of the oka-wood. A fengla scurries past, somewhere beyond the clearing. It is met by an emerald green viper and a dance, one as old as the planet, old as time itself, begins.

 

Down, deep in the dark damp soil, the worms and ants wriggle their way through their short lives. And beneath that, far off, below the city of Myrra, the long-deceased Ahia-Ko sleep for all eternity in the winding, clammy catacombs. Out, out, farther, there is a sea, with many bays, where crustaceans and sharks and fish and cephalopods all perform the same dance just begun by the fengla and the viper.

 

Somewhere at the edge of all that is known, there is a pair of greedy, icy eyes. They turn to her. They are full of rage, and avarice.

 

Rey freezes, then repels those eyes, thwarting the gaze of whoever they belong to as she reigns herself back in. 

 

 _No_ , she tells the eyes. _You are not welcome here._  

 

With that, they dissipate.

 

She turns her focus to the rocks and sticks upon the ground in the clearing, and the unopened akusa blossoms dangling from the branches of the trees above their heads.

 

 _Awaken_. _Arise. Show me._

 

It fills her up and empties her at the same time, just as it did on Batuu. She flows through all of these things and they flow through her. When she opens her eyes at last, she is pleased with the result. Gently drifting through the air are glittering stones and rocks, leaves still damp with morning dew, small sticks and clumps of earth. And above?

 

Blue trumpet-shaped flowers have bloomed upon the branches of the akusa trees.

 

“I knew it,” he breathes, his eyes also open, wide open, and riveted to her. “I knew you’d grown more powerful. I could feel it.”

 

Untangling her legs, Rey attempts to repress her diffident smile and distracts herself by toeing at the dark soil with the tip of her boot.

 

“This is child’s play for you, isn’t it?”

 

She bites her lip. His look is part rapture, part hunger, like he might pounce on her at any moment, like they might begin a dance of their own, one she knows all too well. Rey squeezes her thighs together to relieve the throb that look evokes, the scorching images it calls to mind.

 

“Okay.” He jumps to his feet, then extends his hand to help her up. “Walk fifty paces that way,” he says, pointing to the thick brush of the jungle. He jerks his chin in the other direction. “I’ll do the same.”

 

“And then?”

 

He considers her for a long moment. “No. Too easy.”

 

Without waiting for her response, he yanks his simple cotton shirt over his head and tears two long strips off of it.

 

“Ben Solo, are you trying to seduce me?”

 

“Use this,” he retorts, smirking as he carefully blindfolds her, “to escape the temptation of using your eyes. When you’ve walked fifty paces, turn and find me.”

 

“And if I do find you?” she prompts.

 

“I’ll fuck you on the jungle floor,” he whispers in her ear, his full lips brushing the lobe, tickling her. “Like you were imagining a moment ago.”

 

“Deal,” she blurts out, pivoting on her heel, and marches off to the sound of his low laughter.

 

 

. . .

 

 

Each step away from him is a small agony, but she must engage all her senses so as not to trip on roots and rocks and underbrush, so she pushes down the discomfort of leaving his side and concentrates on the task at hand.

 

When she has gone fifty paces, she calls on the Force, searching for him in the dense knot of life that covers the planet. Bird, reptile, fish, plant, amoeba; it’s all there, a fog through which she must traverse.

 

And then: a distant light. Distant, but strong. Warm.

 

A beacon.

 

Painstakingly, each placement of her foot a test of her senses beyond sight, she makes her way towards that light. Makes her way back towards him. Through that cloud of living matter, through the energy and light and magic that is the Force, she can feel him doing the same.

 

Making his way back to her.

 

All the jungle seems to fall silent, in awe of the thing they are doing, in awe of the Force itself, maybe.

 

His bare chest is warm and hard yet soft, a bit sweaty, when she grazes it with her fingertips. She feels him inhale sharply at her touch.

 

There he is. Her light, her warmth, her beacon.

 

“Ben,” she intones. “See? I’ll always find you.”

 

Just as gingerly as before, he removes the blindfold. His lies on the ground by his booted feet. He is not smiling, but he is not frowning either. He is merely gazing down at her, love and admiration and something… something like reassurance, like restored confidence, glowing in his dark eyes. Emanating in the Force, surrounding her, a spectral embrace.

 

“A deal is a deal,” she says coyly, fluttering her lashes at him.

 

Again, she is rewarded with that deep laughter as he pulls her into his arms, a physical embrace.

 

“C’mere, you,” is all he says.

 

“Mm,” is her reply.

 

They find that words are rather unnecessary for all the things that come next.

 

Not that that stops them from speaking. Not that anything could.

 

 

. . .

 

 

They stay on Akiva in their little treehouse, sleeping tangled up together in their hammock every night, spending their days playing and swimming and reading and learning each other and their bond and the Force, for about a month.

 

It is, as Mara had called it, a honeymoon of sorts. Filled with all the things that honeymoons hold.

 

When it is over— something they both sense one morning, waking up together, sleepy eyes meeting, knowing without speaking that it is time to move on— they make their unhurried way back to the _Falcon_ , and set out for somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere neither of them have ever been. Soon it will be time to return home, wherever that may be. And eventually, they both sense, the call to arms will come from Mara Jade and Luke.

 

But that time is not now. Now is only for them.

 

Rey adjusts the safety strap, fastening it. Beside her, in the co-pilot’s seat, Ben flicks a switch on the subspace radio then adjusts a setting on the control yoke.

 

Feeling her eyes on him, he glances up. And he smiles, a genuine beaming smile that stretches across his face, dimpling his cheeks and crinkling his eyes.

 

Rey knows this moment. She has already been here, in the cockpit with him, both in reality and in dream. But _this_ feels like the moment she foresaw. She glances out the transparisteel viewport. Sure enough, nothing but velvety darkness and the twinkling of faraway stars. 

 

She closes her eyes, just to center herself and focus. Only peace. Only purpose. She can feel him in the Force, a bright warm light. And like the dream: out there in the void, billions of other lives thrum inside her like a steady pulse.

 

“Ready?” he checks, pulling her hand into his. He brings it to his lips, laying soft kisses along her bony knuckles. It is precisely the same. This is what she dreamed. This was always how it was meant to be, and every step along the way has led her here.

 

In a breathless gasp, mimicking her dream self, she answers, “Yes.”

 

“Okay.” He nods. “You want to do the honors?”

 

“What?” The blur between dream and reality leaves her momentarily addled; she opens her eyes, searching his features. The warm affection she finds there grounds her. This is _real_. She might have dreamed it once, but now it is real.

 

He tips his head in the direction of the console, dark silver-streaked hair falling over half his face. 

 

“Punch it, sweetheart.”

 

Exhilarated, she reaches out, takes hold of the hyperdrive lever, and pulls it towards herself. The Falcon gives a lurch then accelerates, sublight at first, then faster and faster until the stars are pulled to streaks across their vision. Onwards they soar, into the blue-white-black blur of hyperspace. On and on, and on, and on… 

 

And that, as they have always said and will always continue to say, is that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last round of notes?
> 
> How about a source for all the [slang](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_phrases_and_slang/Legends)?
> 
> Where is: [Akiva](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Akiva), [Geonosis](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Geonosis), [Mustafar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mustafar), [Ilum](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ilum), and [Lothal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lothal)? Some locales on Akiva: [Myrra](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Myrra), the [Witch's Finger](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Witch%27s_Finger), the [Canyon of Akar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Canyon_of_Akar), and the [catacombs](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Catacombs_of_Akiva).
> 
> Who who's, gffa-style: [the Wexley family](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Wexley_family), the [Ahia-Ko](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ahia-Ko), the [Ithorians](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ithorian), the [Koorivars](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Koorivar), the [Sullustans](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Sullustan).
> 
> What _was_ the [Jedi Order](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Order)?
> 
> Fauna: [clever-bird](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Clever-bird), [atele](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Atele), [cerulean skycatcher](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cerulean_skycatcher), [ya-ya fly](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ya-ya_fly), [florakeet](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Florakeet), [fengla](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Fengla), and [viper](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Akivan_viper).
> 
> Fauna: [jarwal tree](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jarwal_tree), [asuka tree](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Asuka_tree), and [oka-wood tree](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Oka-wood).
> 
> More about [mausims](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mausim).
> 
> I'd like to ride a [bala-bala](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bala-bala).
> 
> What is [plastocrete](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Plastocrete)?
> 
> Edibles/Potables: [dao-ben steamed bun](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dao-ben_steamed_bun), [tangoo melon](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tangoo_melon), [grog](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Grog), and [arguez sausage](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Arguez_sausage).
> 
> What is a [coolth backpack](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Coolth_backpack)? [It seems they are normally personal A/C devices so let's just pretend these ones were converted to be used for food.]
> 
> Last but not in any way least, what is a [lightsaber](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lightsaber) and what is a [kyber crystal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kyber_crystal)?
> 
> So that's all from me. All that's left to say is **thank you** , again, so much. Thank you for reading, thank you for taking these 200 thousand or so words and giving them a home. Thank you for making me feel free, and safe, and loved. Thank you. 💓


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